TENSION in the South China Sea continues to rise despite the obvious need to calm it down and for the major competing claimants, the Philippines and China in particular, to attempt some necessary rapprochement. A comprehensive peaceful agreement is not easy to aim at, especially if the major outside powers are more interested in promoting war, as they are, but if the competing parties could at least remain open to each other, they could hopefully agree to work toward a common ultimate goal.
However acrimonious their debate has become, they could still try to live with each other without trying to generate a regional, if not a global, war out of their give-and-take. China should try not to take over any of the Philippines' islands, islets, reefs, banks, shoals or cays in the Spratlys, and the Philippines should not succumb to the manipulations of any foreign power to wage a proxy war against Beijing.
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