Neighbors' deals signal focus on development

The 30 Sino-Philippine operative projects worth $3.7 billion on poverty reduction, announced after a meeting between Chinese Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng and Philippine Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez in Beijing on Monday, mark further progress in improving bilateral relations since October when Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte visited Beijing.

The fact that the projects covered are only the "initial batch" of a much wider range of deals that also include $15 billion in pledged investment by China to the Philippines points to the vast potential for win-win cooperation between the two neighbors.

All this has not come easily. Duterte's predecessor Benigno Aquino III adopted a confrontational stance on the South China Sea, which culminated in a Hague-based arbitral tribunal ruling in July in a case brought by Manila that sought to invalidate China's historical claim of sovereignty over the Nansha Islands.