30th March 2021
Former US President Donald Trump may have grabbed the international spotlight in 2018 after announcing that he and North Korean strongman Kim Jong-un “fell in love”, but an equally unforeseen political romance between two world leaders was already brewing not that far away in Asia.
The odd couple in question was Xi Jinping, China’s ever-smiling yet ruthless head of state, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who shocked the world since taking office in June 2016 with his pro-Beijing stance and may live to face the repercussions of this ill-advised choice of allies.
China’s errand boy since day one
On paper, an amicable relationship between Manila and Beijing does not sound that controversial in light of the geographic and historical ties shared by the two nations. Still, the reality of the political moment at which Duterte came into power paints a completely different picture.
Leading up to the 2016 transfer of power, the Philippines had already fallen prey to years of bullying by Chinese vessels in the South China Sea, done in service of the Xi government’s ultimate plan to gain control of almost all the maritime territory and the bodies of land located within that region.
The most notable clash dates back to 2012 when Chinese military forces wrestled control of Scarborough Shoal away from the Philippines following a military standoff, but the two nations are still embroiled in a dispute over the Spratly Islands along with Taiwan, Vietnam Malaysia, and Brunei.
At the time, the situation was so dire that former Filipino president and Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno Simeon Aquino III, took China in January 2013 to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA)—an international organization responsible for settling intergovernmental disputes— over the so-called “nine-dash line”—a fictive border drawn by China outlining the area it believes to be rightfully part of its jurisdiction, which encompasses around 90% of the South China Sea.
A final verdict refuting China’s claims was ultimately reached on July 12, 2016, less than two weeks after Rodrigo Duterte assumed the presidency on June 30.
As the leader of the nation that initiated the lawsuit against China, the incoming Filipino president was poised to score an early political victory fuelled by his nation’s triumph over its long-time adversary.
Instead, the supposedly tough and uncompromising new leader gave Beijing a free pass by choosing to disregard the reached ruling over China’s South China Sea activity, essentially sabotaging the progress that his nation had made on the issue.
However, as some experts have pointed out, there were reports that Duterte’s campaign coffers were flooded with donations from China during his 2016 election bid.
It should, therefore, come as no surprise that he would hold a position that prioritizes China’s interests over his own country’s.
In yet another devastating blow to the Philippines’ long-established foreign policy, Duterte moved, within the same year of his election, to sever the country’s 70-year alliance with the US, pursuing instead stronger ties with China, which had vowed to spend billions of dollars on building infrastructure in the Philippines.
In short, Duterte staked his country’s future as well as his own on China’s word, a bold move, yet one that would cost him dearly in the years to follow.
A losing bet on all counts
So how did the change of allegiances by the new leadership of the Philippines and its willingness to break long-held norms to curry favor with Beijing get rewarded?
Unsurprisingly, China took the inaction of Duterte following the 2016 PCA ruling as an invitation to continue violating the sovereignty of its South China Sea neighbors by attempting to force them out of their lawfully owned territory.
What came as a surprise, however, is that the Philippines was not spared from these aggressions, despite its new president going out of his way to befriend his Chinese counterpart and serve his interests.
Instead, Chinese-funded militia vessels have continued to illegally breach the Philippines’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ)— an area that the country has the uncontested right to exploit, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea— and to harass Filipino fishermen attempting to operate there.
On March 7, 2021, the hostilities culminated in what could be perceived as a full-on invasion, when over 200 vessels belonging to China’s maritime militia forayed into the Philippines EEZ near Julian Felipe Reef (Whitsun Reef) and maintained a presence in the area as recently as April.
The refusal of the intruding Chinese fleet to exit the area comes as direct defiance to a demand by Filipino Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and is, according to experts, reminiscent of the 2012 Scarborough Shoal stalemate which did not bode well for the Philippines’ struggle to keep China’s territorial advances at bay.
However, unlike the 2012 loss of territory which was met with strong resistance till the very end, the currently unfolding events can be partially blamed on the Philippines itself, or rather on the inaction of its leadership during the years leading up to the present-day situation.
A particularly disappointing series of events occurred in 2019 following the collision of a Chinese vessel on June 9 into a Filipino fishing boat stationed near the Spratly Islands.
In response to the incident, the country’s leadership feigned outrage, labeling the event as a potential act of aggression, and threatening to cut diplomatic ties with China over what Duterte’s spokesperson described as “barbaric, uncivilized and outrageous actions”.
While these strong statements initially gave hope that the Philippines might revert back to its former course in terms of China relations, they turned out to be no more than political theatre devoid of any actual substance.
In fact, Duterte flew to Beijing in August 2019, less than three months after the crash, for a friendly visit with Xi Jinping where he further debased himself and his country.
Instead of demanding answers or seeking to hold the Chinese president accountable for the recent act of hostility perpetrated against his nation, Duterte expressed his gratitude for “the close friendship with President Xi”, pledged to maintain cooperation with Beijing in the South China Sea, and continued to grovel for financial aid to the Philippines’ economy and infrastructure.
Speaking of the billions of dollars that China promised to spend on Filipino infrastructure in exchange for Duterte’s loyalty, the vast majority of those investments have either been delayed or failed to hit the ground altogether.
By September 2020, the only plans that had materialized were a bridge construction and an irrigation project, both of which were facing obstacles that put them under threat of being postponed or even abandoned, meaning that the Philippines had sacrificed its former alliances and jeopardized its position in the South China Sea without gaining anything in return
By contrast, the US and Japan remain the largest trade partners and aid providers for the Philippines, with the US providing its former South China Sea ally with over $9.3 million in COVID-19 relief by July 2020, proving that true friends are only revealed in times of crisis.
An overdue reassessment of allegiances
To say that the Philippines has gotten the short end of the stick in terms of its supposed new friendship with China would be a massive understatement, judging by the utter failure that the policy turned out to be for the former both on the economic and the territorial front.
As a result, anti-China sentiment has been on the rise among the Filipino public who increasingly perceives their leader as a Beijing puppet, incapable of fulfilling his campaign promise to extract economic concessions from the Xi government.
Duterte has equally come under fire for his failure to defend Filipino fishermen from the incessant harassment by Chinese vessels.
The latest backlash came on March 13, 2021, when a Duterte-backed law that would have divided the Palawan island west of the Philippines into three different provinces suffered an embarrassing referendum defeat after being rejected by the region’s occupants who have endured their fair share of Chinese aggression.
Fearing the effects of the growing public dissatisfaction on the fast-approaching 2022 presidential election, Duterte has been forced to adjust his policy towards China and take a more neutral stance on its territorial violations.
At a June 26, 2020 summit held in Hanoi, the Philippines joined its Vietnamese neighbor in expressing concern over China ramping up its illegal actions in the South China Sea since the COVID-19 pandemic began and the instability that it may cause in the region.
In September of the same year, Duterte reversed his prior position on the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s 2016 ruling that discredited China’s territorial claims, describing the verdict as “beyond compromise and beyond the reach of passing governments to dilute, diminish, or abandon.”
Furthermore, the notoriously anti-American president backtracked in June 2020 on his February 2020 decision to ban US troops from being stationed in his country for the purpose of keeping tabs on Chinese activity in the region.
As encouraging as these developments may seem, the new approach could come at a great cost for the Philippines, whose economy is still greatly reliant on the imports of its banana supply by the Chinese market, a bargaining chip that Beijing has historically used to its advantage in what economists refer to as the “banana war”.
Caught between a rock and a hard place, Duterte has been attempting to maintain a fine balance between making strong statements that would risk antagonizing China and remaining silent which would be perceived domestically as a sign of weakness.
In July 2020, he claimed that China was already “in possession” of the South China Sea and that his country’s only recourse would be to go to war, which he considers pointless in light of the opponent’s vast military superiority.
But experts have warned that prematurely waving the white flag of surrender plays into the hand of China who for the last five years has seized on the Philippines’ inaction to establish a foothold in Whitsun Reef and to convert it into an unofficial base for its operations.
Regardless of whether Duterte has been beholden to Beijing all along or if he was simply doing what he believed to be best for his country, there is no doubt that his appeasement strategy towards China has been detrimental both to the well-being of the Philippines and to his own popularity among his constituents: a mistake that other world leaders would be wise not to replicate.
