"China is the neighborhood bully, plain and simple — and no amount of singing will change that."
China’s recent bellicose behavior in the South China Sea is particularly galling, coming as it does while the rest of the world—including the Philippines—continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic that began on Chinese soil.
Late last month, Manila protested Beijing’s creation of two new administrative districts and naming of 80 geographic features in the South China Sea that impinged on Philippine claims.
In particular, the Department of Foreign Affairs protested China’s designation of Fiery Cross Reef as a regional administrative center in the Spratlys, where China has turned seven reefs into missile-protected island bases with three runways.
“The Philippines calls on China to adhere to international law,” the DFA said, reminding Beijing of a 2002 agreement that urged governments with rival claims in the sea to exercise self-restraint and avoid actions that would escalate the disputes and undermine regional stability.
The DFA also protested an incident in which a Chinese naval vessel pointed a radar gun at a Philippine Navy ship in Philippine waters on Feb. 17.
Two days after the protest was filed, the Chinese embassy in Manila released a hamfisted music video—unfortunately entitled Isang Dagat or One Sea—as part of Beijing’s COVID-19 diplomatic offensive.
It was offensive, indeed.
Instead of generating goodwill, the music video reminded Filipinos of China’s many transgressions in the West Philippine Sea.
The song, whose lyrics were written by Chinese Ambassador H.E. Huang Xilian and which was performed by Chinese diplomat Xia Wenxin from the embassy and several Filipino and Chinese celebrities, mentioned the friendship between the two countries and their mutual cooperation in dealing with the pandemic.
“Just as the lyric goes, as friendly neighbors across the sea, China and the Philippines will continue to join hands and make every effort to overcome the COVID-19 at the earliest,” the Chinese embassy said on Twitter.
But there is nothing friendly in China’s continuing violation of our sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea, nor in Beijing’s clumsy attempts to turn the global COVID-19 disaster it spawned into a public relations victory for Chinese expertise and beneficence.
China’s actions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare the serious flaw in a foreign policy that shunts aside our territorial differences in the name of “friendly relations” and Chinese investments and loans.
If your next-door neighbor were to occupy part of your garden, come into your house and infect members of your household with a deadly virus, then offered to help you deal with the disease he or she brought, would you overlook the theft of your property and welcome that neighbor with open arms? We think not.
It is time to wake up to the fact that China, under its present leadership, is neither a good neighbor nor a dependable friend. It is the neighborhood bully, plain and simple—and no amount of singing will change that.
