MANILA — The Philippines should keep "pushing back" against China's activities in the West Philippine Sea to regain "some lost ground," a maritime law expert said Monday, comparing the stances taken by the current and previous administration on the maritime dispute.

"Hopefully, the administration [of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.] will keep a steady push-back, keep up its push-back against these activities so that we can somehow recover some of these lost grounds or these lost seas," Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, told the ABS-CBN News Channel.

Batongbacal's statement comes after Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo reiterated the Philippines' support for multilateralism and rules-based order in resolving disputes in the South China Sea, within which is the West Philippine Sea.

During a high-level security conference in Germany, Manalo said Beijing's harassment has become a daily situation faced by Filipino fishermen and the Philippine Coast Guard in the West Philippine Sea.

• DFA chief Manalo reiterates PH support for multilateralism, rules-based order at Germany security conference

Batongbacal said the Marcos administration is more open and transparent with the situation in the West Philippine Sea.

• PH ‘won’t lose 1 inch of its territory’, Marcos Jr. reiterates in speech at PMA

"The reason why China has been able to get away with a lot of things is that the previous administration cooperated with it in hiding events and downplaying them," he said, referring to the administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte, who forged friendlier ties with Beijing.

"So this policy of immediately reporting what has happened really should be done... Hopefully this will be the standing policy of this administration and that will help us certainly in discouraging China from taking more provocative actions in the future," he added.

Batongbacal said the Philippines can also "try to mobilize and coordinate now with other countries to put leverage against China's actions in the West Philippine Sea."

"We should work with the other claimant countries in coming up with a coordinated response now to these kinds of activities by China," he said.

The goal, Batongbacal noted, is to make China "accept and recognize" international law and "appropriate allocation of jurisdiction in the South China Sea."

"The only way to do that, in the context of the international community, is to make it see that... going against the interest of this region, its neighbors is only going to create more problems for it and create bigger burdens for it," he explained.

"This is indeed the right path. We need to stick to the multilateralism and rules-based order and the rule of law. And for now, within the region, China seems to be the only one that is really going against it and claiming what lawfully belongs to the surrounding countries in Southeast Asia. It cannot force Southeast Asia to abide by its will forever," Batongbacal added.

China claims the South China Sea virtually in its entirety, putting it in conflict with other claimants such as the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Earlier this month, a Chinese vessel flashed a military-grade laser light at a Philippine Coast Guard vessel in the contested waters, temporarily blinding the latter's crew.

• China blames PH Coast Guard over laser incident near Ayungin Shoal
• China's use of military grade laser 'a show of force': expert

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