President Rodrigo Duterte is visiting in China but he made clear he was not calling with a begging bowl.
“What’s ours is ours,” declared Duterte in his departure statement from Brunei on his way to Beijing. The President’s unequivocal statement should lay to rest any speculation he would compromise the country’s sovereign territorial rights in the West Philippine Sea. It’s well and good he said what had to be said before he landed in Beijing. The President is straitjacketed from issuing any statement on sovereignty that would rankle his Chinese hosts. Earlier in Davao, Duterte said the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea) issue would be brought up in his bilateral with President X Jinping.
“But there will be no imposition,” he said, even after Manila had won its case in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that rejected Beijing’s expansive SCS claim.
Such are the niceties of diplomatic protocol. We are sure the President has been so properly advised by his protocol team in the Philippine delegation. Once the wining and dining with the traditional toasts begin at the Banquet Hall of the People in Beijing, it’s all sweet talk and the usual platitudes recalling the long history of friendship between the Chinese and Filipino people that dates back to pre-Spanish times. History will wallpaper the present problems of maritime dispute in the South China Sea and the presence of Chinese warships in our waters in the West Philippine Sea.
Filipino fisherfolk who have been deprived of their livelihood since the Chinese deployed gunboats near Scarborough Shoal (Panatag) are beseeching the President to talk to the Chinese to let them return to their traditional fishing ground near Bajo Masinloc off Zambales. It’s not enough that China lifted its ban on Philippine banana exports. The sea is vast enough for both countries to share and provide food for Chinese and Filipinos as they did before the Scarborough standoff that the Chinese won with gunboat diplomacy.
This is the reality of our bilateral relations with China. The Filipino people are sanguine that aside from the economic benefits of the presidential visit, the strained relations between Beijing and Manila can be repaired. On this score, we wish the President well.
The President surely has his shopping list of what he hopes to get from China. The list includes loans, trade concessions, and economic aid despite his earlier statement the Philippines can survive without foreign aid from the United States and the European Union. The full details of the bilateral talks between the two sides will be fully disclosed when the President and his delegation return to the country. There’s no reason not to. There is a media group covering the delegation and journalists can always sniff if something is amiss in what the presidential communication team releases.
The defense officials with the President must be wary of what military hardware the Philippines is purchasing from China. The Chinese sold missiles to Indonesia and not too many know that two of them were duds. The misfire and near-fatal explosion of one of the missiles on board an Indon ship and the other which exploded in midair before it could reach its target only came out in Jane’s world book on military weaponry.
China is considered the inventor of gunpowder explosive going back all the way back before Marco Polo learned about it. China’s fireworks is world-renowned and dazzling as shown in the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 1997 turnover of Hong Kong by Great Britain. But China has not arrived yet when it comes to making missiles if we go by the poor quality of the ones sold to Indonesia. The United, States, Britain, France, Russia and Israel are still way ahead in the technology.
China is a fascinating country and its people are friendly. They are perfect hosts as I learned during my days in the diplomatic service and as a journalist which brought me to Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen and Tianjin. It’s the Chinese leadership and its official policy of aggression that is unsettling the stability in the Asia-Pacific region.
Instead of playing the lead role model, a rising China has turned the Asia Pacific into a potential powder keg. All it needs now is a spark in this flashpoint, something no nation would want too see. Otherwise, the dazzling display of fireworks in the sky we might see is not the celebratory kind but deadly missiles inflicting heavy casualties.
On another front, President Duterte told Al Jazeera that he does not give a “f..k” what human rights critics say about his relentless war on illegal drugs He must have shocked and awed his two interviewers when they heard a head of state utter profanity.
“I have a moral duty to my country to protect future generations against the scourge of drug addiction,” said Digong, adding “it is God in his wisdom who put me in this place, not the human rights advocates.” Duterte may have invoked or blamed God for making him president but it’s really 16 million Filipinos out of 50 million voters who did. They found resonance and traction with his language, the same type of crude talk spoken by the man on the street. So, Filipinos can relate to Duterte’s foul language but we live in a multi-polar world where decent language and decorum are still observed by other presidents elected to lead.
