Manila’s formal rebuke of Ambassador Jing Quan deepens a war of words between Beijing and a U.S. treaty ally, a dispute of particular interest in California, home to more than a third of the nation’s Filipino Americans.
By Staff Reporter
The Philippine government on Monday formally summoned China’s ambassador in Manila, Jing Quan, over his remark last week that Beijing “may easily win” if it chose to use force against the Philippines, escalating a dispute that has drawn calls in the Philippine Senate for the envoy’s expulsion.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro conveyed the country’s “serious concern and strong objection to his public statement of Oct 15, 2026, which conveyed a threat of the use of force,” according to a Department of Foreign Affairs statement reported by Agence France-Presse. The summons came Monday in Manila, Sunday night in California.
“Secretary Lazaro told the Ambassador that the statement was provocative and unacceptable, and does not contribute to creating understanding,” the department said, according to Rappler. It added that “the Department reserves the right to take further diplomatic action as it deems necessary,” without specifying what that might be. The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP after the meeting.
What the ambassador said
The dispute began Thursday, when Mr. Jing spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the Second Diliman Dialogue on China-Philippines relations, according to The Manila Times. He was responding to Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., who had called China, not the Philippines, the troublemaker in the region.
“We should feel fortunate enough that you have a neighbor like China in this region,” Mr. Jing said, according to Rappler. “If we want to use force, we may easily win.” He went on to say that China would not use force and that it loves peace, according to accounts by Rappler, GMA News and AFP.
The foreign ministry said that evening that it was “regrettable that Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan today had a poor choice of words that would seem to convey a thinly veiled threat of the use of force,” AFP reported. On Friday, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told reporters, “Well, it sounds very much to me like a threat, and it is not a very diplomatic statement to be made,” according to GMA News.
The Chinese Embassy, while confirming the remarks, accused Rear Adm. Jay Tarriela, the Philippine Coast Guard’s spokesman for the South China Sea, of taking them out of context. It said Mr. Jing “emphasised that China views the Philippines as a neighbour across the sea and a friend bound to China by deep historical and cultural ties,” according to AFP. Admiral Tarriela had written on X: “Not using force against a country whose rights you are already violating is not peace. It is coercion by other means!”
A dare from the embassy
The exchange hardened over the weekend. Senator Risa Hontiveros urged Mr. Marcos to demand a formal retraction and apology, adding, “If none comes, the ambassador should be declared persona non grata,” GMA News reported. Senators JV Ejercito and Francis Pangilinan also said the envoy should go, and the Senate majority was preparing a resolution condemning his remarks, The Philippine Star reported.
The embassy answered on Facebook. “Is this threat or coercion? But anyway, just do it. Otherwise, STOP BLUFFING,” it wrote, according to The Philippine Star. In a later post, it said of lawmakers seeking the ambassador’s expulsion, “We will not welcome them to China. Simple and fair enough.” The embassy had earlier said it welcomed the chance for “face-to-face communication” with Mr. Marcos.
Monday’s statement from Manila addressed those posts directly. “It is not the place of a foreign mission to publicly criticize or taunt Philippine officials and legislators who are acting within their mandates,” the department said, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. It also said it would keep lines of communication with China open.
Only the president can expel a foreign diplomat, Rappler noted, and Mr. Marcos has so far chosen a diplomatic course. Rappler also reported that Mr. Jing, who took up his post in December 2025, had been summoned by Mr. Marcos once before, in July, over remarks in another interview.
Why it matters on this side of the Pacific
For Washington, the episode tests an alliance it has repeatedly pledged to honor at sea. In an October 2025 statement after a Chinese vessel rammed a Philippine fisheries ship, the State Department said that “Article IV of the 1951 United States-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty extends to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft – including those of its Coast Guard – anywhere in the South China Sea.” The San Francisco Inquirer found no public State Department comment on Mr. Jing’s remarks as of early Monday.
Mr. Jing has long experience with Washington. Before arriving in Manila, he served as minister and deputy chief of mission at China’s embassy in Washington, the Philippine foreign ministry said at the time, according to the Daily Tribune.
In California, the dispute carries a personal dimension. About 1.6 million of the country’s 4.2 million people of Filipino descent, or 38 percent, live in the state, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data, and the San Francisco metropolitan area is home to about 290,000, second only to the Los Angeles area.
At the center of the quarrel is Beijing’s claim to nearly all of the South China Sea, including the waters Manila calls the West Philippine Sea. China does not recognize the 2016 international arbitral ruling that upheld the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and rejected Beijing’s claim of historical rights.
The row comes a month before President Trump and President Xi Jinping are expected to meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, according to the South China Morning Post, where leaders of 21 economies, including the United States, will gather Nov. 18 and 19.
