I thought this is an excellent article . China should meet Duerte offering halfway. And China should not humiliate Philippine. No one deserve better live than the Phillipino. They have once the highest living standard in Asia but felt into poverty due to corruption and mismanagement of the economy by the elite. It pain me to see thousand upon thousand work as a maid in Singapore and Hongkong even though they are highly educated some with university degree. There were huge Chinese colony before the Spanish come since Phillipine is so close to Taiwan. Many Phillipino without knowing have Chinese blood in them. Including this Aquino. HIs mother upon becoming Phillipine President insists on visiting her ancestral home in Fujian to pray on the ancestral hall and declaring not only is she Phillipine president but she is also daughter of this Fujian village. Her familly name is Cojuanco which is corruption of Ko-Juan-ko . Ko is typical southern Chinese family name. and Any Phillipino with co ending mean Koh which is brother and Juan of course is Spanish name. Many Phillipino elite are Chinese Mestizo including the father of the nation. Jose Rizal
Rodrigo Duterte is a fool.
Doesn’t he know that Scarborough Shoal is the place to draw a “
”? That, with the United States, he and the Philippines could make Xi Jinping “
” there? That the shoal should be the launching point for a new concerted effort
“every Chinese overreach, early and often,” and is a dispute worthy of “indecent” operations? He seems blissfully unaware that China’s activities around the shoal, along with its other maritime territorial claims, are
to China claiming the entire Pacific Ocean and achieving “
.”
It’s not just foreign voices. Duterte is ignoring Filipinos too. His own predecessor took China to the Hague Tribunal and won just a few months ago—an advantage that Duterte is calmly throwing away. A Filipino law professor
last April that “Southeast Asian states will not quietly surrender sovereign rights guaranteed by international law. Against overwhelming power, the only logical recourse is to gravitate closer together, and join with external powers.” The expert consensus
: regional governments “cannot back down because that risks encouraging China to be more aggressive still.”
Yet, in the teeth of the evidence, the government of the Philippines has recently shown itself to be uninterested in drawing lines in the sand, making China lose face, challenging China’s territorial claims or joining the United States as a junior partner in checking China’s rise. To the contrary, President Rodrigo Duterte has declared that
an “independent posture and independent foreign policy.” Here’s what that policy looks like.
First, the Philippines has been
that it will conduct bilateral territorial negotiations with China, as opposed to America’s
of lawsuits or multilateral discussions. Bilateral talks on Chinese investment, infrastructure and trade are being planned first, to promote cooperation before tackling the more difficult territorial issues. “The natural effect of engaging China in other areas of concern will precisely open the door for more open discussions of the [maritime] dispute with the view of resolving the dispute peacefully,” Perfecto Yasay, the Philippine secretary of foreign affairs,
. This sort of practical engagement will evidently begin next week, as Duterte
with hundreds of business executives in tow.
Second, President Duterte has declared that the Philippines will no longer conduct patrols with the United States in the South China Sea: “We will not join any expedition or patrolling the sea. I will not allow it because I do not want my country to be involved in a hostile act.” Lest any doubts remain, the Philippines’ defense secretary has since
.
Third, Duterte has
that he wants U.S. Special Forces to leave the Philippines, and is looking to China and Russia for arms purchases.
Why is Duterte pursuing such
? He apparently rejects the
that have seduced the American commentariat. What myths?
1. China could gracefully submit to the Hague ruling.
2. Amped-up American and allied “resolve” would force China to comply.
3. China’s rejection of the ruling signifies its rejection of international order.
Disagreeing with the ruling of a tribunal in The Hague (not, by the way, the UN, as some
) hardly expresses an intention to destroy international society or dominate the Pacific. Disagreeing with your local court doesn’t mean that want to overthrow your nation’s government. Duterte isn’t irrational. He prefers to work with China to resolve the dispute in a mutually beneficial way. He agrees with an
: “Relations between China and the Philippines should go beyond the South China Sea issue.”
Scarborough Shoal
an abstraction for everything commentators dislike in China: North Korea’s nuclear program, “aerial intrusions” in the East China Sea, “seaborne incursions” in Okinawa Prefecture, human-rights abuses, aircraft demonstrations when U.S. defense secretaries are visiting Beijing, the “calculated humiliation” at the G-20 summit, “economic and trade matters,” and “environmental degradation” in the South China Sea. Among such commentators, the
: reinforced U.S. primacy, stronger regional alliances and the trumpeting of America’s “undoubted ability to prevail.”
To make Scarborough Shoal—or any other rock or reef of the South China Sea—serve as an abstract picture containing every complaint the United States has about China is foolish and dangerous. Political scientists
that territory is already the single issue any two states are most likely to fight over. Packing all other issues of contention into a territorial dispute—an exercise in grab-bag hawkishness—is a certain way to enflame the territorial dispute and to make it unsolvable.
There is nothing new here. In the spring of 1913, Russian foreign minister Sergey Sazonov told Serbian prime minister Nikola Pašić, who was eager to extend Serbian territory into the former Ottoman state of Albania, that Russia was not going to risk a war with Austria-Hungary over a few small towns.
:
Here it is not a matter of Djakova, Dibra and Scutari, but the question is: Is Russia with its friends stronger or weaker than Austria and its friends? The whole Slavic world and everybody else will consider Russia defeated through the policy and threats of Austria. The belief and confidence in Russia will not only be weakened, but it will be annihilated, and the Austrian-German policy will triumph.
This was what dispute abstraction looked like before World War I. Aware that Russia had no actual territorial interest in the small towns of Albania, Pašić abstracted the issue into one of prestige and credibility, attempting to make the dispute a “
” between Russia and Austria-Hungary (and its ally Germany).
