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Friday, March 29, 2024

Rethinking China

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"It seems like the Philippines is not alone in rethinking and opening up its relationship with our giant neighbor."

 

After years of negotiation and dialogue, last year, a world power reversed its decades-old stance on China and signed a provisional deal with its leaders, allowing for more open relations between the two powers.

But as any rapprochement with China undertaken in recent years, this move by its top leader has come under intense scrutiny—and criticism.

It seems like this world power has caved in to the Communist government, perceived as an act of giving up its long-held positions on preserving its freedoms.

But the world power insists it has consigned nothing to the Chinese government. To date, the full text of the provisional agreement has not been released.

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No, we are not talking of the Philippines. Nor of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. That world power is the Holy See, the diplomatic personality of the Catholic Church. The world leader is Pope Francis.

In 2018, the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China signed a historic provisional agreement on the appointment of Chinese bishops, with Pope Francis recognizing seven bishops ordained by Beijing without the approval of the Holy See. It was signed after a meeting between Msgr. Antoine Camilleri, the Vatican’s undersecretary for relations with states, and Wang Chao, China’s vice-minister for foreign affairs.

While the deal has split Catholics in China and around the world, the Vatican insists that the move aims to ease age-old tensions between China and the Catholic Church. The two countries severed diplomatic ties in 1951, two years after the founding of the communist People’s Republic.

Yet the Church insists the move is pastoral, not political.

According to a Vatican statement, the provisional agreement “foresees the possibility of periodic reviews of its application.”

In a time of political realignment, especially with regard to relations with the Chinese government, it is difficult not to notice the parallelisms.

It seems like the Philippines is not alone in rethinking and opening up its relationship with China.

There is no doubt that China, with its more than billion population and recent economic gains, has firmly established its claims to be this generation’s paramount global power.

If the Vatican has realized the need to reassess its relationship with China, what more justification is required about the necessity for the Philippines to pivot its relations with its Chinese neighbor.

It has become not only a matter of a political—but an economic necessity.

This is could be a good reference point in understanding President Duterte’s moves to bring our country closer to China. Or why he has made more than five visits to China, the latest made just recently.

With the issues surrounding the West Philippine Sea and China’s growing economic influence over our country—not to mention the perceived debt traps to which these economic deals will lead us to—critics of the President believe our overtures to China is endangering our country’s sovereignty.

A more balanced understanding will only prove the obvious. We cannot align our diplomatic interests with a foreign power on the other side of the globe, and not seek to strengthen our relations with our next-door-neighbor. A military solution over our territorial disputes will do more harm than good, especially when our armed capability is dwarfed by China’s military might. Being oblivious to China’s newfound economic wealth will be too much of an opportunity loss for our developing economy.

But our people, especially critics of the President, choose to overlook these obvious facts, choosing instead to criticize him for kowtowing to Beijing.

In the meanwhile, we raise criticism after criticism, put on blame after blame on the President for allegedly selling out our country to the Chinese.

But even for a country, respect is earned, not demanded. That respect is earned not by how much we play global political realignments, but with how those in power has worked to make the lives of the people better and ensure their welfare.

Even China knows that. Its importance on the global stage has come not after the ideological shifts after the Chinese Revolution, but only after the economic gains made by instituting socialism with Chinese characteristics.

With more and more Chinese enterprises expanding into the international market, and more Chinese citizens enjoying a better quality of life, China has earned the respect of the entire world.

However, it appears that Filipinos have been stuck in the outdated geopolitics of the almost forgotten Cold War, disliking China simply because of a closer affinity to the United States.

It’s a good thing President Duterte has shacked our foreign policy from this way of thinking.

Don’t get me wrong. There are red flags in our relations with China that for me we should take notice. The alarming influx of Chinese citizens into our country for example. The lack of transparency in the way agreements with China are negotiated and carried out. The bullish display of Chinese military power within our exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea.

Obviously, we have yet a long way to go for us to earn China’s respect as an equal sovereign power.

But the problem, in my opinion, is not China. It is us. Our lack of national unity. The dearth of national pride. Our unreasonable expectations of those who lead us. Our tendency to condone corruption when it benefits us. Our propensity to complain but reluctance to participate. Our indifference to our duties as citizens, but our endless list of demands surrounding our rights.

Yet we complain that China does not respect us. If we want respect, we need to earn it.

We cannot allow political sentimentalism define our foreign relations, but the clarity of our present purpose.

In rethinking its relationship with the China, the Catholic Church know too well that for it to fully carry out its spiritual mission, it need to let go of some established institutional arrangements. Its pastoral purpose was simply far more important than its political motives.

It must not have been an easy decision to make—considering the more than fifty years of persecution that faithful Chinese Catholics had to endure under the Communist regime.

Last month, the first ordinations to take place in the framework of the provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops were held. On August 26, Bishop Anthony Yao Shun of Jining in China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region was the first bishop to have openly received recognition from the Chinese government and the papal mandate from the Vatican at the same ceremony.

Until today, the details of that provisional agreement has not been made public. But the desired effects have now come to fruition.

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