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Friday, March 29, 2024

China on the mind

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"Unfortunately, the world turns, and so do countries on each other."

 

 

It’s come out in recent Senate hearings that the Chinese may be able to unilaterally cut off power supply to the country through the minority investment of China’s State Grid Corporation in the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the company controlled by Henry Sy Jr. that’s responsible for providing power to everyone who’s connected to the grid.

However, Atty. Melvin Matibag, president of TransCo which actually owns the grid assets on the country’s behalf, assured the senators that the President can take over the grid’s management in times of emergency, thereby restoring power within 24 to 48 hours. He added that there are also rules in place to limit Chinese presence in the actual management of grid operations.

I hope it’s obvious that the Sy family shouldn’t be blamed for this state of affairs, since their joint venture with the Chinese was inked many, many years ago when we still weren’t disputing maritime boundaries with Beijing. In fact, the joint venture was, properly, hailed as a breakthrough for the privatized power sector, which was able to hook up virtually the entire country to power supply (except for some 400 isolated barangays, or one percent of total) during the presidency of Mrs Arroyo.

Unfortunately, the world turns, and so do countries on each other. It may help to note that we aren’t the only ones in this fix. In fact, as pointed out by energy committee member Senator Risa Hontiveros, countries like Kenya, Indonesia and Thailand have also purchased power grid remote control systems from China’s Nari group. What they may already have done—and what we should now do, if we haven’t yet—is to thoroughly audit the Chinese equipment and software to make sure all back doors are covered.

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In the worst case, we’ll still have our off-grid islands who rely on their own stand-alone power sources. We can always organize the resistance movement from those places, initially targeted at an invading Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy.

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To support our point, the U.S. Navy recently sent a couple of its ships into waters claimed by the Chinese under their absurd “nine dashed lines” fiction, as part of the Navy’s regular freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) exercises worldwide. The USS Gabrielle Giffords littoral combat ship sailed near Mischief Reef, while the USS Wayne E. Meyer guided-missile destroyer passed by the Paracel Islands.

The Chinese were predictably enraged by this kind of “provocative, risky conduct”. Although we should remember that FONOPS in no way guarantees the intent of the United States to come to our aid when their interests aren’t directly threatened, it’s still a vicarious thrill to witness these displays of their capability to do so. Seeing them put their thumb in Chinese eyes warms the heart of those who can’t do so.

Chinese outrage is further explained by their continuing problem with the Hong Kong student riots, which escalate by the day. The latest development had hundreds of riotous students holed up inside the Polytechnic University campus. At the same time, over in Washington, both houses of the US Congress passed near-unanimous bills aimed at restricting exports to Hongkong and otherwise sanctioning the government there for what’s going on in their streets.

My own prediction is for an eventual mass round-up especially of the rioters’ leaders, based on intelligence that’s busily being collected even now, followed by an indefinite clampdown on street protests—one that will avoid or minimize bloodshed, while restoring the peace and order that Hongkong’s business community naturally craves. Meantime, while Beijing figures out what to do, the last thing it needs is to be provoked by the navy and the legislators of a superpower with whom it’s now at trade war.

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The martial musings above are echoed in the first reading for the day (Dt 2: 31-35) when Moses recounts how the entire land of Heshbon was “put under the ban; men, women and children; we left no survivor”. This total extermination of an entire people according to the Lord’s will is primly denied in the accompanying footnote, but we should remember that He is often referred to in the Scriptures as “a vengeful God”, and with good reason, based on some of the blood-curdling narratives we can find there.

In the Gospel (Lk 21: 5-11), Jesus foretells the destruction of Jerusalem, the end of days, with some pretty terrifying language of His own: “Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place, and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.”

The Christian eschatology makes as much room for Divine justice as it does for His mercy. To minimize the first in order to emphasize the second trivializes Him and the moral responsibility we all have to obey His word. Let’s not try to let ourselves off the hook by bring Him down to our level. Jesus came down to live among us, true, but only in order to bring us to a Truth that is both terrifying and consoling.

Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com

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