Thank you Your Excellency for the gracious invitation to return to Beijing. Allow me at this point to congratulate you on the success of the Belt and Road Forum. 

We must have these and other fora of constructive engagement with the larger world. 

But we must certainly continue to strengthen our bilateral relations. 

I am pleased to be back in China to renew our nation’s ties of friendship.

I am eager to discuss ways of further expanding and deepening bilateral cooperation in pursuit of shared goals.

Since my state visit last year, the Philippines and China have seen the valued friendships become stronger.

I look forward to productive discussions today to continue this positive engagement to further deepen our relations.

At this time, I want to highlight the progress and development on some points.

We have resumed our regular dialogue mechanism. The Foreign Miniatry consultations was finally reconvened in Manila this year to strengthen ties and to make use of that mechanism.

It is important to keep our communication lines open.

I am pleased that we have established a bilateral consultation mechanism on the South China Sea.

This is one step towards peacefully engaging disputes and I hope that the inaugural meeting in [inaudible] on May 19th will be a success. 

I congratulate you again on the success of the Belt and Road Forum…

— END —