Sen. Robin Padilla profusely praised Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan after they met at a function on Monday evening, calling Jing “educated, gentlemanly, straightforward” and adding that “it’s good to have personal and face-to-face conversations with him to avoid rifts due to exchanges of words that do not lead to peace and development.”
This was the same ambassador who, just hours earlier, had been summoned by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) over his outrageous remarks last week that the Philippines “should feel fortunate enough that you have a neighbor like China in this region,” because “if we want to use force, we may easily win. But no, we will not use force. We love peace.”
The words, said the DFA, were a “thinly veiled threat”—a characterization shared by President Marcos himself (it “sounds very much like a threat,” he said) and by various legislators and sectors in society who slammed Beijing for the grossly undiplomatic rhetoric of its chief envoy in the country.
Did the meeting with the DFA leave Jing chastised? Hardly. He came out of it with an even more pointed retort, warning that the Philippines should not “further challenge our patience.”
Fortified strongholds
Who’s challenging whose patience? The Philippines has been enduring China’s relentless harassment, intimidation, and hostile behavior in the West Philippine Sea—the country’s exclusive economic zone—for years now. International law is definitively on the Philippine side by virtue of the 2016 arbitral ruling upholding Manila’s position and declaring as baseless China’s nine-dash-line claims over nearly the entire South China Sea. That decision is recognized by scores of other countries that have publicly urged China to respect the ruling and abide by international regulations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or Unclos, to which Beijing itself is a signatory.
It was China that militarized the area by seizing shoals and islets and turning them into bristling fortified strongholds. It is China that has repeatedly water-cannoned Filipino fishermen and Coast Guard personnel, that blocks even humanitarian missions for sick Filipino soldiers on the BRP Sierra Madre, and whose embassy in Manila wages a parallel campaign of startling verbal aggression on Philippine soil.
Racist messaging
The Philippines is not, and has never been, the bully in this row. Consider the lopsided situation: In July this year, the media company China Daily came out with an animated video commentary on the South China Sea issue that depicted Filipinos as monkeys. China Daily is a state-controlled media outfit, so the racist messaging must have had official approval.
Could the Philippine ambassador to China have resorted to the same behavior Jing and his embassy in Manila have displayed time and again—say, by deploying bellicose language that condemns the Chinese government for “ill-intentioned remarks, smears or provocations,” by daring it to “stop bluffing,” by asking it to “restrain certain individuals” who are allegedly inflaming the tensions between the two countries? Imagine Beijing’s fury if the Philippine embassy had used those same words to defend Manila’s interests in the Chinese capital.
Perhaps Sen. Kiko Pangilinan is right: “The arrogance and bullying tactics are unprecedented and deplorable, but that’s probably because, should these diplomats fail to toe the Party line, they could very well be called back home to face the firing squad,” he said.
Indeed, Jing appears to revel, at the very least, in the Philippines’ guaranteed freedom of expression, something he and his fellow Chinese citizens are unable to enjoy back home where dissent and free speech are brutally crushed by the authoritarian communist government.
‘Troublemaker’
But here, he’s free to abuse the hospitality and forbearance of his host country, likely confident in the thought that, with the Philippines’ hopelessly polarized politics aggravated by rampant troll operations on social media, China’s position is gaining traction. Why, even the country’s Vice President is echoing the official talking point from Beijing—that the Philippines is the true “troublemaker” in Southeast Asia.
And behind her are many Duterte supporters who, out of spite for the Marcos administration that they had voted into power but now despise after it dared to cast Sara Duterte aside, are suddenly parroting Beijing’s narrative at the expense of their own country’s sovereignty and maritime rights.
Padilla, for instance, a senator of the republic, has publicly condemned neither Beijing’s actions in the West Philippine Sea that encroach on Philippine territory, nor its embassy’s verbal assaults on Philippine officials, including some of his fellow lawmakers.
But since he said he preferred “personal, face-to-face” interactions for resolving disputes, he should be asked, following his chummy meeting with the Chinese ambassador: So what did you say, if any, to defend your country from its oppressor?