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Title:
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Duterte's Most Recent Move In South China Sea Will Strain China-Philippine Relations Again
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Author:
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Ralph Jennings
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Source:
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Forbes
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Date:
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December 7, 2016
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Description:
- China and the Philippines have warmed to each other since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in Manila. In October the president of five months visited Beijing where China pledged $24 billion in aid and both agreed later to discuss how they might work together on a sticky maritime dispute. That dispute, over control of a resource-rich South China Sea tract, had pushed relations to a brink between 2012 through mid-2016. Duterte’s predecessor took China to the world arbitration court, which ruled in July against the Beijing basis for claiming nearly the whole 3.5 million-square-km (1.4 million-square-mile) South China Sea including parts overlapping Manila’s standard 370-km (200 nautical-mile) exclusive economic zone.