SCS rival claimant Vietnam draws closer to China, PH demonizes, quarrels with it
NOTHING could paint a more stark picture of our very wrong foreign relations than the photos in the front pages of Vietnamese and Philippine broadsheets in recent days.
On our newspapers’ front pages were scenes of Chinese Coast Guard vessels shooing away small Filipino vessels hired by the Philippine Coast Guard, which defied and intruded into what China considers part of its sovereign territory they call Rén’ài Jiāo (for us Ayungin Shoal). Some Filipino theatric scenes were so absurd they verged on the hilarious, as in this publicity-hungry priest celebrating Mass on the deck of a ship, with statues of the Nativity nearby. Was he hoping Jesus Christ himself would intervene to drive away the Chinese?
In sharp contrast to such silly theatrics, Vietnamese newspapers’ front pages were filled with photos of Chinese President Xi Jinping smiling ear-to-ear, shaking hands with Vietnamese leaders Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and President Vo Van Thuong during the Chinese leader’s first state visit to Hanoi in six years. The leaders would later announce 37 agreements that would boost the two countries’ bilateral ties, including two that would assure peace in the South China Sea areas the two nations have long been claiming as theirs.
A new level of China-Vietnam friendship and cooperation, Chinese and Vietnamese newspapers ushed. In our case, the lowest level in our relations with China, with imbecilic senators even proposing a catastrophic cutting of our ties with the superpower.
What the hell is happening to our country?
And to think that Vietnam — not us — really has been China’s biggest rival in terms of claiming the Spratlys. Vietnam has occupied since the 1970s 29 features in the Spratlys, we occupy nine, while China has eight.
Battles
Not only that, Vietnam and China have fought bloody battles in the Paracels and in the Spratlys in their attempts to assert their sovereign claims: in the Paracels in 1974 in which the (South) Vietnamese lost 75 servicemen, and in the Johnson South Reef in 1988, in which the weaker country lost 64 sailors. And of course China invaded Vietnam in 1979 to stop the latter from occupying its ally Cambodia. Vietnam lost over 70,000 of its militia to the better-trained and better equipped People’s Liberation Army.
Every year, Vietnam even commemorates is forces’ battle with the Chinese in the Johnson South Reef Battle as a demonstration of their heroic patriotism. But are the Vietnamese emotional about this as to determine their attitudes towards China?
Certainly not.
No wonder Chinese investments have been pouring into Vietnam, totaling $2.9 billion in the first nine months of 2023, accounting for 15 percent of that country’s total foreign investment receipts (Singapore is the biggest with 20 percent) so far. In sharp contrast, Chinese foreign direct investments in the Philippines was a tiny fraction if that amounting to a measly $12.2 million in the same period, down from the $14.8 million last year. There was even a net divestment of FDI from Hong Kong by $66 million, a very red signal that Chinese capital, because of our irrational, belligerent stance over our territorial and maritime disputes with China, may have already called for an embargo of our economy.
Capital inflows from one country into another take signals from others: If one of the biggest sources of foreign direct investment in Asia that has emerged in recent years are evading the Philippines, do you think Japanese, European and US capital would still dare go into the Philippines? No wonder Vietnamese GDP per capita has overtaken us, last year at $4,163 against our $3,498.
Irrationality
I am astonished at the utter irrationality of our policy towards China. Because of wars (Ukraine and now Israel), still the lack of confidence in our economy and leadership, and other international headwinds, total foreign investments into the country in the first nine months of this year dropped 16 percent, from $7 billion to $5.9 billion. Even investments from the US went down by 44 percent to just $104 million.
Yet we antagonize a nation, China, that could be the biggest source of capital in the next many years. And for what, for some godforsaken shoal Vietnam also claims, which is inaccessible to our fishermen and even Coast Guard during the typhoon season?
I am ashamed of our country: We have a developed academe and intellectual corps which however have allowed US minions, the generals and admirals — including a Coast Guard officer ignominiously kicked out of our military academy for exam-cheating — to portray China as an enemy, a bully out to invade and grab our territory. Nothing can be so far from the truth.
Don’t we have committees in Congress on foreign policy which are supposed to provide us with an objective analysis of our territorial and maritime disputes with China in the Spratlys? Yet we just let an ignoramus like Sen. Jinggoy Estrada dominate the discourse, relying on bad-mouthing people (me for instance) rather than debating facts. Don’t we have academics who can come up with a rational objective study of our disputes with China?
Ignorance
How irrationality and sheer ignorance — to the point of insanity – has dominated the minds of our leaders is a testament to the power of US propaganda. China started being depicted as an aggressor in the South China Sea only when the US, particularly during President Obama’s administration, undertook its historic “Pivot to Asia” policy starting 2012, a thinly disguised strategy to contain the rise of China as a superpower, among other things, demonizing it as threatening weaker countries in the region such as the Philippines. It was so easy for the US to brainwash us, given the fact that most of our elites have been little brown Americans, and with our military and coast guard officials wined and dined in “study trips” to the US.
The colossal lie spread by the US, repeated countless times in the internet (and even in opinion columns), is that the Philippines has absolute sovereign rights in the Spratlys because our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) encompasses these areas. This is so totally misinformed: the maritime area called EEZ was agreed upon only in 1994 by 157 countries in a treaty called the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos). But an EEZ does not mean absolute sovereignty but only certain rights as the sole authority to exploit the natural resources there.
More importantly, EEZs cannot negate other countries’ sovereignty established decades, even centuries ago, such as those claimed by China and Vietnam over the Spratlys, as their archipelagos. We did claim the Spratlys as our sovereign territory through the first President Marcos’ 1978 PD 1996; our current leaders though appear to have dropped that claim in the Unclos suit they filed against China in 2013.
In my almost life-long career as a journalist – i.e., in my job of closely observing the course of the nation – I have never seen such a mass delusion (or maybe just within the elite) as the belief that only the Philippines, and not China or Vietnam, has incontrovertible sovereignty over the Spratlys. This is just not borne out of facts: most international scholars have concluded that because of accidents of history – imperialist, legalistic France had “perfected” its claims and later turned the Spratlys over to the Vietnamese after World War 2 — Vietnam has the most legitimate claim.
The insanity is such that even an academic at UP, Jay Batongbacal, and an American columnist, are advocating that the Philippines cut off our diplomatic and economic ties with China, the world’s biggest economy. With over 60 of our trade being with China (which only has 2 percent with us), that would mean a total collapse of our economy, with poverty breaking through the roof, and even food riots breaking out. That is the reality. Yet that insane columnist dismisses such a prospect as merely “some economic losses” we have to bear “to assert our sovereignty.”
And for what? For a lie we refuse to debunk because we can’t believe that the US has very effectively brainwashed us in its agenda to remain as the world’s sole hegemon? Don’t they notice that no other country in Asia and in the world, has adopted such a belligerent stance against China, and over the Spratlys that has been in dispute even before World War 1?
I do hope President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. changes his foreign policy: It will be not just the biggest mistake of his presidency, but our country’s most colossally destructive policy ever, blocking our growth and even worsening poverty. The only reason I can think of for him not to realize how grossly, obviously wrong his present policy is, is if the US has some kind of secret, terrible hold over him.
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SCS rival claimant Vietnam draws closer to China, PH demonizes, quarrels with it
Source: Breaking News PH
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