"Behind the humor is a real sense of frustration."
Top officials and visitors who went to the Pag-asa Island in the West Philippine Sea this week received a surprise on their mobile phones.
“Welcome to China,” one message said as their phones went on roaming. “Welcome to Vietnam,” said another.
The messages, picked up because of a weak local signal in the area, were particularly ironic as the group of visitors were led by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and top military officials, who were there to inaugurate a beaching ramp that will make it easier to deliver materials to make repairs on the island.
Pag-asa, part of the municipality of Kalayaan under the jurisdiction of the Palawan provincial government, is within the Kalayaan Island Group, a cluster of islets claimed by the Philippines.
The island group is part of the Spratlys, which are also claimed by China and Vietnam.
Against the backdrop of these conflicting claims and the Philippines’ plan to beef up infrastructure on the island, it is tempting to read more into the greetings from China and Vietnam than there is. But the messages simply reflect our poor telecommunications infrastructure in the area, rather than any overt act of aggression. We might liken them to the location tags that began appearing on social media in May that declared the Philippines as “a province of China.” While one senator felt this folderol to be worthy of her attention, most people shrugged it off as yet another humorous comment on the extent to which our giant neighbor to the north has come to dominate our affairs—much like the banners and streamers that hung over several pedestrian footbridges in Metro Manila that said “Welcome to the Philippines, Province of China.”
Behind the humor, of course, is a real sense of frustration at the extent to which this administration has bent over backward to accommodate Beijing, starting with President Duterte’s decision early in his term to set aside the 2015 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration that China’s claims in the West Philippine Sea were excessive and invalid.
Then there was the government’s muted and almost apologetic response to the Chinese ramming of a Filipino fishing boat in the Reed Bank, which is well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. One year after the incident in which 22 Filipino fishermen were abandoned in the open sea after their boat was sunk by a Chinese vessel, none of the victims has yet received compensation from the Chinese.
Finally, we saw how some government officials fell over themselves to defend the reopening of online gambling ventures aimed at attracting Chinese gamblers, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Maybe there is something, after all, about those welcome messages.