Claim: President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. did not have any bilateral meetings with world leaders during his Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit participation.

Rating: FALSE

Why we fact-checked this: The posts from different accounts containing the claim are already garnering at least 25,000 reactions; 2,000 comments; and 9,700 shares in total, as of writing.

In the post, they claimed that Marcos had no bilateral meetings with any world leaders during the APEC Summit, unlike his predecessor, former president Rodrigo Duterte, who was able to meet with “major global powers” like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and US President Donald Trump during his term.

This caption was accompanied by a photo collage of Duterte sitting with Putin, Xi Jinping, and Trump in their one-on-one meetings. 

One of the sources, Mike Romero, who declared himself as a Duterte supporter in his bio, is also a verified account which potentially added to the viewers’ trust in his post, hence the high engagement count. Compared to other posts from Romero’s account, this particular one received a significantly higher engagement. It’s the same case with the two other posters, namely Bored Productive and Eel Trc.

The facts: Contrary to the claim of the false post, Marcos conducted several bilateral meetings in his APEC Summit participations since 2022. In the recently concluded 32nd APEC in particular, he publicly announced through a video released by the Presidential Communications Office on November 2 that he met with South Korean President Lee Jae- myung and Chilean President Gabriel Boric. 

In the previous iterations of the summit, he also met with several other world leaders including “major global players” like Xi in 2022, and former US president Joe Biden in 2023. He also met Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and Saudi’s Mohammed bin Salman in 2022. He did not attend the event in 2024.

This proves that he had some bilateral meetings with other heads of state during his participation in APEC. 

Additionally, the collage photo in the post misleads viewers into thinking that Duterte met with Putin, Xi, and Trump at an APEC summit — which is not true. Duterte only had formal APEC bilaterals with Putin in 2016, but his meeting with Xi that same year was a state visit, and the Trump meeting happened in 2017 during the Manila ASEAN Summit. Nonetheless, he had bilaterals with all of them. – Leah Sagaad/Rappler.com

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