The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have been involved in prolonged territorial standoffs but confrontations between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces have spiked in recent years.
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Lithuania and the Philippines signed an agreement on Monday to build a security alliance resulting from their mutual alarm over what they perceive as growing aggression threatening their regions by countries such as China.
The memorandum of understanding signed in Manila by Lithuania's Defence Minister Dovilė Šakalienė and her Philippine counterpart Gilberto Teodoro Jr. aims to foster defence cooperation particularly in cyber security and defence industries.
The pact also covers munitions production and addressing maritime security, the Philippine Department of National Defence said.
Šakalienė described Lithuania’s alarm over an emerging "authoritarian axis" of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, which she raised in an international defence forum in Singapore last month.
The emerging alliance needed to be confronted by a unified response from pro-democracy countries, she said.
"What we see now is that authoritarian states are really cooperating very efficiently," Šakalienė said at a news conference with Teodoro. "One of the worst results is the cooperation on Ukraine."
"Their joint actions are threatening the free world, are threatening the democracy in this world…and we do not have a luxury to allow this to be annihilated," she added.
Chinese officials did not immediately comment on the remarks.
Šakalienė cited China’s actions toward Taiwan and Filipino fishermen in the disputed South China Sea, which Beijing has claimed virtually in its entirety.
South China Sea stand-off
The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have been involved in prolonged territorial standoffs but confrontations between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces have spiked in recent years.
China has used water cannons and dangerous manoeuvres against Philippine government vessels and Filipino fishing fleets, accusing them of encroaching in what it says has been Beijing's territory since ancient times.
It has rejected and continued to defy a 2016 international arbitration decision based on the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea that had invalidated China's expansive historical claims.
The Philippines has adopted a strategy of shaming China by documenting Beijing’s assertive actions in the disputed waters, a key global trade route, to rally international support.
"We see these horrifying materials, videos of how they are threatening Filipino fishermen, how they are treating people who are simply making their living in their own waters, in their own territory," Šakalienė said.
"If they work together to threaten us, then we must work together to defend ourselves."
Teodoro cited the need to "resist any unilateral attempts to reword or re-engineer maritime law and the international order to the benefit of new powers that want to dominate the world to the detriment of smaller nations."
The agreement with Lithuania is part of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos' effort to build an arc of security alliances in Asia and with Western countries, aside from Manila's treaty alliance with Washington, to boost the Southeast Asian country’s territorial defence in light of Chinese actions in the South China Sea.