Whether by chance, or by deliberate intent, the optics related to China in the wake of the visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping has been marred by detrimental images. These include the breach in the protocol for displaying our flag, the unfortunate incident in Panatag where the Chinese Coast Guard prevented a news team from doing its job, the arrest of illegal Chinese workers, and the murder of a Chinese expatriate by a fellow Chinese national. In light of the release of the survey results, which also show that Filipinos don’t trust China, these images have provided a counter-narrative to what the government would like to paint as a successful visit by President Xi.
It is even worse, ironically, that the icing projected as a coup de grace, the signing of 29 memoranda of understanding (MOU), agreements and exchanges of letters, most notable of which is the signing of the MOU for a joint oil and gas exploration, was marred by what appeared as an absence of transparency. This is further worsened by a seeming lack of coordination between and among top officials, with divergent statements from the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Energy and the Palace.
As if the China-related troubles are not enough, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana made it worse when he publicly declared that President Duterte has stopped government officials from celebrating openly our victory with the ruling of the arbitral tribunal at the The Hague for fear of offending China. This, after the President openly declared to other countries during the Asean summit in Singapore that China is already in possession of the contested West Philippine Sea.
And it doesn’t help that instead of apologizing for the breach in flag protocol, administration officials appear only too eager to give justifications even before they call for an inquiry into the matter.
Meanwhile, prominent social media enablers of the President, and their coterie of followers, lose no time in propagating what appears to be an apologist stance favoring China. SWS was accused of peddling fake news. The GMA news team of Jun Veneracion was pilloried, as if he was the aggressor, and many even agreed that Jun should have asked China for permission. Anyone who appeared to question China’s conduct and motives was trolled and shamed.
It was actually surreal to see the spectacle of Filipinos insulting other Filipinos just to defend China. It is like American neo-colonialism all over again, albeit with a new, Chinese face.
The dominant theme of the pro-China line of defense is always rooted to the argument that we, as a weak country, have no choice, because the alternative is war if we take a more confrontational stance. Top government officials diminish the ruling of the arbitral tribunal as useless and unenforceable. Many argue that instead of criticizing the President, we should even thank him for his boldness to appease China and save us from the mess which his predecessors had created.
But to argue that capitulation and obsequiousness, which many would recast as pragmatic diplomacy, is the only way to proceed to avoid war betrays a gross misunderstanding of international relations, and an inability to understand not only the political psychology of China but also of other state players.
It is a fallacy to argue that the option is either war or capitulation because the arbitral tribunal ruling is an empty victory for us.
First of all, China may be a bully, but it is not in its best interest to be a warmonger. If it is, then it should have already invaded Taiwan, where its territorial claim is more historically rooted, or declared war on Vietnam which has always treated it as an adversary. China would not invest in resources for waging a war, when it could achieve the same through debt-trap diplomacy.
Many defenders of China would like us to believe that the developmentalist packages that it brings are a worthy reward for taking the alternative path to confrontation. The psychology of state actors was lost on us. This is perhaps borne from a kind of thinking framed by a drug war where drug criminals are the adversaries, and the options are always the polar opposites of having violence and dying or capitulating and living.
States naturally gravitate towards the underdog and they do not want to be identified with aggressors. Even without formal enforcing powers relative to the arbitral tribunal ruling, the Philippines would have earned the support of allies in its legal fight in the West Philippine Sea.
The optics was all ours. We are a small country but whose legitimate claim was just affirmed by an international body through a fair process. We are being bullied by a country that obviously was flaunting its power by flexing both its military and economic superiority. But instead of taking this route, we abandoned the arbitral tribunal ruling and banked on China’s debt diplomacy masked by a developmentalist facade which has the risk of unraveling anyway sooner or later, as it has in fact unraveled in Sri Lanka.
Now, we are reduced to becoming an apologist, that boy in the school yard who was so afraid of the bully that he turned himself into an ally just to survive. Vietnam and Malaysia, even Indonesia, are now emerging as the templates for how to deal a soft blow to China, even as we have to contend with being relegated to being that country which told the world that China already is in possession of the WPS so we have no choice but to live with it.
As Vietnam is telling China to leave the Paracels alone, Mahathir is gradually extricating Malaysia from onerous Chinese loans, and Indonesia doesn’t hesitate to fire their guns at Chinese encroachment, we are becoming a people who are busy defending Chinese interests and would rather troll and demean our own who dare call out their motives. And we are so confident that we are the ones doing it the right way.
Now, you tell me which countries are earning the respect of the world community. We simply squandered our leverage. Now, we have to hope and pray that we will not be caught in a debt trap. Because if that happens, we may have to face the fact that we did it to ourselves.
https://www.manilatimes.net/the-fragility-of-a-china-pivot/474097/
https://www.manilatimes.net/the-fragility-of-a-china-pivot/474097/
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