I am a first-level court judge posted in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro. My father is a full-blooded Chinese who migrated to the Philippines in 1938 at the height of the Sino-Japanese war. Despite my Chinese roots, allow me to say that China’s maritime claims in the West Philippine Sea and its aggressive acts in pursuit thereof, are without legal and historical basis and are unjustified.
China, because it is wealthy and prosperous, now hectors its poorer neighbors. No civilized country will countenance this. China may be rich and strong but
being so does not make it right. It makes it more wrong.
When China was poor and in the midst of an internecine war, Chinese from all walks of life were forced into a diaspora and settled in different countries, including the Philippines where they, including my own father, were embraced.
The Communist Party of China should consider the fact that China was once a poor and struggling country and its people cried for equality and justice. During those times, the Philippines took in hundreds of thousands of Chinese people desperately seeking to survive.
The Chinese rulers should rethink their priorities and foreign policy. The way it is now conducting itself in relation with the world, China will go the way of Iran, Russia and North Korea. And it will be in isolation. It will not be good for the Chinese people and the world in
general.
—CORNELIO A. SY,
presiding judge,
Occidental Mindoro