The gathering was both wide-ranging and forward-looking. Both sides committed to long-term strategic partnership on a whole host of issues, including infrastructure connectivity, green energy transition, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief capacity-building and people-to-people ties.
There is much at stake for both sides. People-to-people ties are robust, with residents of Southeast Asian origin among the largest minority groups in Australia.
Just months earlier, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong criticised the Marcos administration’s stance against China by warning the Philippines, “are you sure you want to get into a fight where you will be the battleground?”
With little evidence of a firm backing for the Philippines’ stance, the final communique only generically encouraged “all countries to avoid any unilateral actions that endanger peace, security and stability in the region” and to “properly manage differences” based on dialogue and international law.
Overall, the summit was just as successful in underscoring shared interest in deepened economic cooperation as it was in exposing geopolitical fault lines on most pressing flashpoints in the region and beyond.
Richard Heydarian is a Manila-based academic and author of Asia’s New Battlefield: US, China and the Struggle for Western Pacific, and the forthcoming Duterte’s Rise