‘Eager’ Duterte cosies up to Xi Jinping
Billion-dollar pledges likely after meeting
BANGKOK: As President Xi Jinping of China began a state visit to Manila yesterday, he will be able to count on few counterparts more eager than President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.
“I simply love Xi Jinping,” Mr Duterte said in April. “He understands my problem and is willing to help, so I would say, ‘Thank you, China.’”
On Monday, Mr Xi returned the affection, describing how bilateral relations have rebounded since a low point in 2016 when the Philippines successfully challenged China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea before an international tribunal.
“Our relations have now seen a rainbow after the rain,” Mr Xi wrote in an article disseminated by Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.
Yet even if Mr Xi’s two-day visit to the Philippines is wrapped in adulatory language, hard questions are being asked in Manila whether Mr Duterte’s rapprochement with China has actually helped the country.
Mr Xi’s trip, the first to the Philippines by a Chinese leader in 13 years, will most likely result in multi-billion-dollar pledges. But some economists wonder whether the money will actually materialise.
Two years ago, soon after he replaced a Philippine president harshly critical of China, Mr Duterte traveled to Beijing and signed several high-profile investment deals.
He told his hosts that “America has lost” in the military and economic spheres, in a blunt rejection of the Philippines’ longtime ally.
Yet China’s investment in the Philippines remains more promise than reality. Only a fraction of the US$24 billion (791 billion baht) in Chinese projects and financing that were agreed on two years ago has been approved for implementation.
Even as Mr Duterte has soft-pedalled on territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Beijing has steadily built up military bases on islets also claimed by the Philippines.
In 2016, an international tribunal handed the Philippines an unexpected victory when it dismissed Beijing’s expansive claims to the South China Sea, based on a suit brought by the government of Mr Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno S Aquino III.
Since then, Mr Duterte, who took office days before the tribunal ruling, has declined to push Beijing to honour the judgement, even though international legal precedent is on the Philippines’ side.
Last week, at a regional summit meeting in Singapore, Mr Duterte appeared to minimise the Philippines’ own claims in the South China Sea, stating that “China is already in possession” of the contested waterway. The United States, which has sent warships to the South China Sea to draw attention to the territorial claims of five other governments, should avoid “creating friction”, Mr Duterte said.
Nearly 85% of Filipinos canvassed for a survey by Social Weather Stations, a respected local polling firm, said they opposed the Philippine government’s inaction on China’s movements in the South China Sea.
In recent months, Beijing has landed military jets and stationed surface-to-air
missiles on bits of turf claimed by the Philippines and other states.
“Duterte’s statement on the South China Sea, while it smacks of utter pragmatism, has been viewed by many as capitulation
bordering on treason,” said Clarita Carlos, the former president of the National Defence College of the Philippines.
The armed forces of the Philippines have also quietly expanded the number
of exercises they will conduct with the US military next year, even as Mr Duterte warns that the United States is destabilising the regional geopolitical order.
“A slavish policy that ignores Chinese transgressions holds back the Philippine military and surrenders to Beijing’s wishes,” said Jose Antonio Custodio, a Philippine military historian. “Suffice it to say, elements in the military are demoralised at this turn of events.”