Of the 11 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN, the Philippines is of the greatest importance to China. It has over 7,000 islands, sprawled between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea, has the largest and most valuable marine resources and enormous deposits of gas and crude oil.
The Philippines significantly offers the best strategic base for China’s ambition to gain control and domination of Southeast Asia and entire Asia.
China’s intentions in this country are now clear and are being pursued with tenacity. She has claimed and occupied the entire exclusive economic zone of the Philippines under the United Nation Convention on the Laws of the Seas. It has fortified most of the islands within the territorial waters of our country.
The subversion of Philippine independence and sovereignty which started and almost succeeded at the height of the First Quarter Storm, had it not been for the imposition of martial law, has now been resumed. China has always been supportive of Joma Sison’s National Democratic Front, the Communist Party and the New People’s Army. Even with President Duterte’s avowal of friendship with Xi Jinping, Joema Sison is still the alternative of China as president of our country.
The United States always has an alternative to every incumbent president of the Philippines whenever he or she deviates from its policies. China will do the same as she seeks to influence our country’s growth and development.
Thousands of Chinese have illegally entered the Philippines through devious outsourcing job placements, massive bribery, and outright human smuggling. China is eager to make the Philippines a surrogate country or a province.
The ten other Asean countries, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore, Brunei, Myanmar and East Timor, will all eventually fall under the influence or control of China once it becomes the most powerful nation in the world.
The Filipino nation is once again in the radar of another superpower. The three and a half centuries of slavery under Spain, the 50 years of political humiliation under the United States of America and the four years of barbaric Japanese occupation are still etched in the culture of the Filipino race.
But it is the Filipinos themselves who enhanced China’s influence in the Philippines. The earliest Chinese migrants to our country were patient, hardworking, humble and self-sacrificing. They started as street vendors, became grocery owners after a few years and millionaires in two decades.
The indigenous people of the Philippines were easy-going, care free and indolent. They were more peaceful than combative, more accommodating than suspicious and content with what they have while less eager to acquire material wealth or possessions.
The early inhabitants of these islands enjoyed what amounts to them as paradise culture.
Most of the richest citizens in our country today are of Chinese ancestry. Henry Sy, Lucio Tan, John Gokongwei and several other titans of trade and industry came from China. They assumed Filipino citizenship but retained Chinese customs in their families.
The Chinese are hardworking; they are wizards in financial matters. There are more billionaires in China today than in other countries.
Filipinos of full, half, or one-fourth Chinese ancestry are invariably humble, patient, self-effacing, and industrious. Very few red-blooded native Filipinos can match the work ethic of the Chinese people.
But the preponderant majority of Filipino citizens with Chinese ancestry are loyal to our country and will prefer to stay here than live in mainland China. Most, if not all, harbor and treasure their blood ancestry and are proud of China’s ascent as a superpower.
Some of the taipans have more investments in China now than in the Philippines. But they are wary of China’s regulatory business policies and they prefer our country’s free-wheeling economic regime.
When President Rodrigo Duterte made his pivot to China early in his term, China has been treating our country shabbily, laughing at our protests and insulting our intelligence. Our people now cower in fear, humiliation and shame from the brazen disregard by China of our legitimate grievances.
At the height of his power, Napoleon Bonaparte warned the European nations to beware of China which he described as a sleeping lion that will be on a rampage once awake.
China is now a grizzly bear snarling at Uncle Sam’s Eagle and squeezing small nations like the Philippines. China’s Belt and Road Initiative is a devious program to conquer other nations by emasculating their economies.
Xi Jinping, for as long as he remains the supreme and undisputed leader of the Chinese Communist Party, is determined to realize his dream to regain China’s glory as an empire in the Middle Ages, install his country as the most powerful nation on earth, and the epitome of a communist-socialist dictatorial regime.
These are not fantasies or day dreams. They are fast unfolding as realities in just a few years. Five years is now a long time in China which is outpacing the United States in technological and scientific developments. The most advanced and supergiant projects in transport, manufacturing, ecological restitution programs, and pioneering ventures into outer space are now being undertaken or already in existence.
China now has come up with a supersonic nuclear missile which cannot be intercepted in midair. She is ahead of the USA in advances in artificial intelligence and outer space exploration blueprints.
While there are hotspots or flash points which could ignite armed confrontation between China and the United States, Xi Jinping and Joe Biden will keep them under control. Both know that going to war is suicidal and insane.
What is going on in the world today are not the usual boom-and-bust cyclical economic developments or the inevitable processes of obsolescence. What are emerging are revolutionary breakthroughs in science and technology and providential intervention in human affairs.
Both heads of state of the two superpowers are aware of their limitations and shortcomings, as well as their strength. They are capable of overcoming the swirling crucibles confronting humanity today. Let us hope that both will be content to leave behind great legacies for which they will be revered and enshrined in history.
God will decide the Filipino people’s fate and destiny.