Sino-Philippine relations: a new era
Big boost for trade, health, technology, science and tourism after top-level talks
PHILIPPINE President Rodrigo Duterte has showered China with praise in his speeches for helping the Philippines in its tough war on drugs.
Last Saturday, he announced that China has pledged to build another rehabilitation facility in the country.
“China has the kindest soul of all,” Duterte told a news conference in his home city of Davao, after he returned from visits to Cambodia and Singapore. Were it not for China and “a good soul” (Chinese) philanthropist Huang Rulun), Duterte said the cash-strapped government would not have built a 10 000-bed facility big enough to house an increasing number of drug dependants in the country.
“(That’s why) I said to China’s Xie Xie, thank you,” Duterte said.
After he arrived from his four-day trip to China in October, Duterte reported that his visit “signalled a turning point in history and opened formal lines of communications” between Beijing and Manila, paving the way for the resumption of the bilateral consultations, which were on hold for several years.
“In all meetings, we had productive and extensive discussions of the full range of Chinese-Philippine relations, from trade to infrastructures and tourism, and to science and technology and health,” the Filipino leader said. Indeed, the Philippines’ new ambassador to China, Jose Santiago Santa Romana, is optimistic about the future relations between China and the Philippines.
In a message to Xinhua, Santa Romana said Sino-Philippine co-operation is “improving,” and that “prospects are bright for further development of Philippine-China ties in 2017”.
“Philippines-China relations have entered a new chapter after the successful state visit of Duterte to China last October,” Santa Romana said. He said diplomatic ties between Beijing and Manila “are improving with the resumption of bilateral talks between the two governments.”
China is at odds with a number of its Asian neighbours, including the Philippines, over disputed claims in the South China Sea, through which $5-trillion-worth of ship-borne trade passes each year.
However, Santa Romana said the sea dispute “should not be and will not be an obstacle to the development of bilateral ties” between the two countries.
“The focus and the key driver of Philippines-China relations under the Duterte administration will be economic trade and finance,” he said, adding that “economic co-operation, not disputes, will drive Philippines-China relations.”
“The disputes will not disappear overnight but there will be direct talks and bilateral talks to resolve them peacefully.”
Santa Romana said the Philippines “has shifted to seeking better political and economic ties with China but is not seeking a military alliance”. “At best, it would be an alliance of trade and commerce,” he said.
This time, he reiterated the fact that economic co-operation, and not disputes, will drive Sino-Philippines relations.
“So it’s basically normalising relations again but it doesn’t mean the dispute issue has gone away,” he said.
Manila is “moving fast” to rekindle its ties with Beijing that had soured since 2012 when Manila lodged a case against China over Huangyan Island in the South China Sea in an interim tribunal at The Hague.
Duterte restated that the Philippines would not press China on an arbitral tribunal ruling over the South China Sea issue. “In the play of politics now, I will set aside the arbitral ruling,” he told a news conference last Saturday, adding: “I will not impose anything on China. Why? Because the politics here in Southeast Asia is changing. Like us now, I will separate or I will demand that you (US forces) go out of my country.”
Since Duterte’s visit in October, Socio-economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia said last week that Manila was able to close a $100 million contract for fruit exports to China, along with the lifting of Chinese bans on Philippine bananas and mangoes.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer ran an editorial on Duterte’s Beijing visit. “By design, his ‘sum total’ approach to Philippine-Chinese relation is now centre stage: a calibrated attempt to lower tensions related to the South China Sea disputes, a greater focus on trade and economic issues, and also a willingness to use Chinese largesse to fill the infrastructure deficit in the Philippines,” it said.
Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin called the Duterte visit “highly successful,” saying it “signifies the full return of China and the Philippines friendship back to its normal level.”
Liu said, after the bilateral talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Duterte, “a new stage is now open between the two countries to address the South China Sea issue though bilateral discussions, and it means a full recovery of the traditional friendship between China and the Philippines”.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez and Pernia said Duterte has rebalanced Philippine foreign policy by ordering his cabinet to move quickly towards regional economic integration with Asean (As- sociation of Southeast Asian Nations) and North Asia’s powerhouses, such as China. Even before the victory of US President-elect Donald Trump, Dominguez said the Duterte administration was already keen on joining the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, rather than the US-led TransPacific Partnership (TPP), which is being championed by outgoing President Barack Obama who framed the TPP as the centrepiece of the US “pivot to Asia”. The US-led trade pact excludes China.
“With the TPP’s fate uncertain,” Dominguez said Duterte’s “China pivot could not have come at a better time, especially with the Philippines chairing Asean next year on its 50th anniversary as a regional bloc.” Dominguez said the Philippines is more than ready to chair the Asean meetings in 2017, as Duterte “had apparently foreseen correctly the need to turn Asean’s attention toward China, the world’s second-largest economy.”
Dominguez has said in pre-