Duterte's China policy

For four years, former Philippine Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio and others like former Foreign Minister Alberto del Rosario have vented at President Rodrigo Duterte for what they considered his accommodation of Beijing's "aggression" in the South China Sea by failing immediately to implement an arbitration victory against China.

They launched a campaign that severely criticized him and his China policy and called on him to confront China regardless of the consequences including the potential damage to the Philippine economy and its people. Now the critics are singing a different tune. This is because they now recognize that Duterte's strategy may be on the verge of success.

The arbitration case was brought by the Republic of the Philippines under the presidency of Benigno Aquino Jr against the People's Republic of China using the dispute settlement provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It argued that certain claims and actions by China in the South China Sea were violations of UNCLOS.

On July 12, 2016, just after Duterte took office as the new president, the tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines on almost all its complaints. Although the panel did not rule on maritime boundaries per se, it did rule that China has "no historical rights" [to resources] based on its "nine-dash line" historic claim.

This reaffirmed the Philippine's EEZ (exclusive economic zone) and continental-shelf claims. Perhaps more significant, it ruled that no above-high-tide feature in the South China Sea was entitled to an EEZ or a continental shelf, removing any alternative basis to China's claims. China refused to participate in the arbitration and rejected the ruling.

Both Carpio and del Rosario were intimately involved in preparing and prosecuting the case, which in part explains their bitterness that Aquino's successor Duterte did not immediately implement the "victory."

But Duterte had a different, larger and longer-term view. He foresaw the dire consequences of immediately pressing the issue and decided that the real costs to the Philippines and its people would far outweigh the more theoretical benefits of national pride.

His approach to China was driven in part by his determination not to be bound by the cultural, ideological and foreign-policy shackles of America's neocolonialism. He also wanted to make a decision that he thought was in the best interests of the Filipino poor who could not endure much more economic hardship that would almost certainly result from confronting China.

He likely reckoned that the Philippines' future lies in Asia, that the Philippines is militarily weak, that China is militarily and economically already regional dominant and likely to become ever more so, and that no country - including its ally, the US - was likely to come to its assistance militarily against China.

He also may have assumed that the arbitration panel's ruling is now part of international law and is not likely to change easily or quickly. So he and his like-minded supporters saw the situation as requiring deft hedging and the art of delay until a time more ripe for a peaceful mutually beneficial resolution of the issue.

Thus Duterte sought a temporary compromise that would allow the Philippines to share access to the resources. The result so far has been continued access to the fisheries for Filipino fishermen and the possibility of "joint development" of any oil and gas. In the meantime, PhilippineChina relations - including economic relations - remained good. The alternative to Duterte's policy - trying to implement the arbitration decision - would likely have resulted in no access to the Philippines' own resources and crippling economic, political and perhaps even military retribution by China.

But Duterte's critics including Carpio and del Rosario were livid. They called the policy "appeasement" and a failure to defend the Philippines' constitutional right to the resources in its EEZ and on its continental shelf.