Blinken’s statement, issued by the US Embassy in Manila on Tuesday, was released on the sixth anniversary of the 2016 award by an arbitral tribunal established in The Hague under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea following a complaint by Philippine government in 2013 for China’s increasingly aggressive actions in disputed waters. China did not participate in the arbitration, dismissed its ruling as a sham and continues to defy it, embroiling it in territorial disputes with the Philippines and other Southeast Asian claimant states in recent years. “We again call on the DPRK to abide by its obligations under international law and stop its provocative behavior,” Blinken said, using the acronym for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China. “We also affirm that an armed attack on Philippine armed forces, public ships or aircraft in the South China Sea would invoke US mutual defense commitments” under the 1951 US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, Blinken said. There was no immediate reaction from Beijing. But Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a news conference in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya, that China was accelerating talks with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes the Philippines and three other claimant states, to reach a non-aggression pact called a “code of conduct” to turn the South China Sea “into a sea of ​​peace and cooperation”. “We will oppose the bloc’s confrontation and Cold War mentality,” Wang told reporters after meeting his counterpart in Malaysia, the latest stop on his five-nation Southeast Asian swing. He received no questions. In addition to China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei had overlapping claims to the busy waterway, through which an estimated $5 trillion in goods pass each year and which is believed to be rich in undersea gas deposits and oil. The potential flashpoint has become a key front in the US-China rivalry. Washington does not claim the disputed waters, but has deployed Navy ships and Air Force jets to patrol the waterway for decades and says freedom of navigation and overflight is in the US national interest. This has drawn angry reactions from China, which has accused the US of meddling in a purely Asian dispute and warned it to stay away. Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo said on Tuesday that the arbitration ruling would be a pillar of his new government’s policy and actions in the disputed region and rejected efforts to undermine the “unquestionable” decision. “These findings are no longer within the bounds of denial and refutation and are final as they are indisputable. The award is final,” Manalo said in a statement. “We categorically reject attempts to undermine it … even to erase it from our law, history and collective memories,” said Manalo, who did not directly name China. The Philippines’ new president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., took office on June 30 after a landslide election victory. Marcos Jr.’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, tabled the arbitration ruling for years after taking office in 2016 and developed friendly ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping while criticizing US security policies. In 2019, Duterte said he finally asked Xi to comply with the decision, but was told unequivocally: “We will not back down.” Marcos Jr. upheld the arbitration ruling and said he would not allow even one “square millimeter” of Philippine waters to be encroached upon. But in January, before he won the presidency, he said that since China refused to recognize the ruling, Duterte’s policy of diplomatic engagement is “really our only option.” Dozens of left-wing activists and workers demonstrated Tuesday in front of the Chinese consulate in Manila’s Makati financial district, calling on Beijing to respect the arbitration ruling and for Marcos Jr. to defend the country’s territory and sovereign rights in the South China Sea.

Associated Press reporters Joeal Calupitan and Aaron Favila in Manila and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.