How sinicized could an ambassador be?

ND we have Mauro here.” Thus did Ambassador Chito Sta. Romana, the Philippine envoy to China, include me among those he singled out from among the audience. The occasion was The Wednesday Forum held last week at the UCCP Cosmopolitan Church in Ermita, Manila. It was just one of the many Chinese-concerned gatherings during the advent of February. Another was the event sponsored by the Association for Philippines-China Understanding (APCU) which I would have gladly attended, if only for the invitation having been conveyed to me by someone who consistently calls me Comrade, Rene Velasco, but which I failed to attend owing to sudden tightness in my schedule. Still another was the giving affair in Caloocan City to which I was invited by Wilson Lee Flores. Too many occasions in celebration, quite obviously, of ever-increasing Chinese goodwill and attentiveness to the Filipino nation. How I wished I had the time to attend every single one of them.

I was initially enthused that I found time to come to the UCCP Cosmopolitan Church’s The Wednesday Forum. The main speaker was Ambassador Sta. Romana. I have long been intrigued by the guy, being the paradigm of those youths who were caught visiting China when the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in 1971. Chito headed the student delegation which decided to stay put in China rather than risk incarceration if they returned home. They seemed to have done the next best thing to imprisonment: stay away from home for eons. One year after the writ suspension, President Ferdinand E. Marcos declared martial law, and many of Chito’s colleagues in the leadership of the CPP/NPA/NDF-instigated national democratic movement were arrested and jailed, not least among them CPP founder Jose Maria Sison, NPA chief Bernabe Buscayno, SDK chairman Sixto Carlos, and their supreme sovereign, Ninoy Aquino.

Strict compartmentalization in the revolutionary movement prevented me from fraternizing with the student sector except those student leaders from the Philippine College of Commerce and the University of the Philippines who religiously stuck by the strike that I led in the Makabayan Publishing Corp. beginning in April 1971. At the UCCP forum, I could only surmise that Chito must have been among those students who kept vigil with us at the strike area. How else could he have known me before to be able to say, “And Mauro is here.”

“He must have been reading your column,” my seatmate opined.

But my profile photo in my column is that of a clean-shaven not seventyish- looking guy, much different from what must have appeared in the eyes of the

stare at me, a shabbily whiskered character, clumsily attired in imitation leather jacket and cap. No way he could have iden-

column photograph.

Silently I appreciated Chito’s recognition.

But in all candor, his long dis-

was nothing in his talk that I hadn’t already written about in my columns through all these past eight years:

certain areas in the South China Sea; the arbitral case the Philippines lodged at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague, China’s snubbing of the proceedings and the perceived Philippine victory; China’s insistence on a bilateral settlement of the dispute; President Duterte’s rightly pursuing the economic course of settling the issue, etc.

“He talks too long,” whispers my seatmate. I told myself, “Not too long if you view it as arguing the Chinese case.” You do need a lot more than the entire breadth of the theologically inspired discussion of China-Philippine relationship to get the whole issue over with. I had this

Philippine Ambassador to China Chito Sta. Romana, a young man of 23 when he headed a youth delegation that went to China in 1971, and stayed for more than 30 years. much forbearance for that moment I would get the chance to get my message across to Chito at whatever time he ended his speech.

I had this one single concern. From the time those student leaders stayed put in China in 1971 all the way up to 2010 when Chito decided to come home, the time lapse had been 40 years. This meant he had stayed in China longer than he had in the land of his birth; he left the country when he was 23 years old. He stayed in China for a total of 31 continuous years.

If duration of residence in a country is to be the gauge of one’s citizenship, then Ambassador Sta. Romana must be more Chinese than Filipino, simple as that. It is no surprise then that when he speaks of the Philippine-China relationship, it must be beyond him to get away from having to sound very Chinese rather the Filipino diplomat that he is. Well, as one historian once observed, China is one nation that has never been really conquered by a foreign power — because the conqueror ultimately ends up being assimilated into the irrepressible Chinese culture.

If I were to undergo 40 years of continuous assimilation into that culture, how could I have escaped total sinicization?

But make no mistake. Nothing is said here about being anti-China. Rather what is stressed is, as an old Chinese saying goes, “Nuns singing different tunes in different mountains.” Chinese propaganda in whatever concern and in whatever form

-

state my case, for instance, on the

or on the alleged debt traps hidden in Chinese loans to the Philippines,

country in two packages since President Duterte’s dramatic turnaround in diplomatic alliance to China at the onset of his term.

How did it feel for Chito to have sounded like he was propagandizing for China rather than doing the exquisitely delicate task of diplomacy for the Philippines? He started speaking at about 2 in the afternoon and

I said, I had the forbearance for the moment that I’d be able to get my message across to him.

When the moment came, I asked: What was your objective in hiding in China in 1971? Have you achieved that objective now that you have joined the administration of President Duterte?

Alas, but the audience were allowed to deliver their questions only through cellphone texts. And the moderator simply read them quickly one after another — giving the ambassador no chance to answer them one by one.