Ferdinand Marcos Jr. gave his fifth annual address to Congress on July 27 with the country’s most delicate foreign relationship hanging over it. The Associated Press read the speech as a veiled rebuke of Beijing. The Diplomat counted a single explicit reference to China, in a list of countries that kept fuel flowing to the Philippines after the Strait of Hormuz closed in March and April. Everything else aimed at Beijing without saying its name.
The tone was familiar, but the timing was not. Days earlier, Chinese and Philippine vessels clashed near Second Thomas Shoal, a reef Manila and Beijing both claim even though it sits inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. In the chamber, Marcos addressed friends and detractors alike, phrasing broad enough to cover both Beijing and the opposition.
The sentences that did the work
Marcos insisted Filipinos were not greedy, not racists, and not liars. The denial answered, without a citation, an insult: China Daily, the state-owned outlet, had shown Filipinos as monkeys in an AI-generated video, and days before the speech Marcos summoned Ambassador Jing Quan to protest. Manila called the images racist and dehumanizing. Beijing’s spokesman said the video did not represent the official position, while repeating that China regards the arbitration that produced the 2016 ruling as a political farce.
On the ruling itself, which invalidated Beijing’s expansive maritime claim, Marcos insisted the award was not something the Philippines advanced alone, nor something it would abandon. He closed by reaching into the national anthem, saying Filipinos would not be subdued by those who sought to oppress them. His insistence that Filipinos do not yield echoed his 2024 speech at a defense forum in Singapore.
Marcos marked the award’s 10th anniversary by promising to defend it against any attempt, foreign or domestic, to chip away at it. The Hague tribunal’s decision affirmed Philippine sovereignty over the features inside the country’s maritime zone. Beijing’s line has not moved since 2016: it calls the ruling illegal, null, void, and without binding effect.
The audience in the room
The sharpest edges were domestic. The Defense Secretary, who had accused the Chinese ambassador of breaking a confidentiality agreement covering their July meeting, called for pro-China politicians to step aside unless they comply with the law, contest it in court, or resign. The meeting had been meant to calm the waters; it instead produced a public spat over what was said.
Marcos did not address the irony in his own history lesson. When he summoned the memory of Filipinos resisting foreign conquerors, he meant the United States and Japan, the colonial powers of the early 20th century, now Manila’s strongest backers against Beijing.
There were two silences, and one piece of family business. Marcos made no mention of the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte, his former ally, a gap The Diplomat flagged. And his one domestic headline was about his own kin: an anti-graft prosecutor would file charges against Martin Romualdez, the former House speaker and the president’s cousin, over kickbacks from flood-control projects. Marcos said the wider probe had recovered or frozen nearly 25 billion pesos, about $410 million, and that he was not a president for his family or his friends.
The Diplomat read the speech as serving two purposes at once: a statement of foreign policy and a bid for unity in a moment of political crisis, corruption anger and economic strain. The message to Beijing was coded but legible: the claim stays, the award stands, and the sea will be used to hold the country together. Whether the code survives the next collision at Second Thomas Shoal is another matter.