We are not China’s vassal state

“When two elephants collide, the ants on the ground get crushed.”

--Southeast Asian saying

The official state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Philippines has all the makings of the classic historical treatment by China of its southern neighbors as tributary and vassal states.

In the ancient period when China considered itself as the celestial empire, whenever the emperor visited its peripheral southern states and neighbors, the vassal and tributary states would roll out the best carpets and treat the celestial emperor with the pomp and pageantry reserved only for visiting superior masters.

With President Rodrigo Duterte’s pivot to China, he has all the markings of a vassal and tributary state leader welcoming a superior master to its humble abode. In the guise of presenting a new approach to foreign policy, the Duterte regime literally surrendered all sovereign claims to Philippine territories in the West Philippine Sea despite a favorable ruling for the Philippines by the international courts.

This it did by remaining silent on the repeated violations of China on the sovereign rights of the Philippines when the former built a series of artificial islands and constructed military and surveillance facilities in territories that fall within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

Moreover, it has gone soft in persecuting Chinese drug lords and members of criminal syndicates caught operating in the Philippines either by not persecuting them or by simply handing them over to Chinese authorities despite being caught committing crimes in the Philippines.

The Duterte regime looked the other way while Chinese fishermen and members of the Chinese navy continuously harassed Philippine fisherfolk preventing our own citizens from fishing in our own waters.

All of these incidents were remarkable testimony of the Duterte regime’s subordination to Chinese aggressive policies in the region. This could be explained through the the government’s desire to access the necessary Chinese funds and investments for what it heralds as the Philippines’ golden age of infrastructure via the Build, Build, Build program.

Short of funds and running into serious budgetary deficit, the Duterte regime was desperate in seeking financial assistance from Chinese investors and government loans to finance its ambitious projects. This, despite the unfortunate experiences of other countries that fell to the debt trap of Chinese development aggression.

All of these earned the ire of the other superpower that the Duterte regime continues to be subservient to. The United States still maintains the largest foreign military presence in the country via the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. It still has the most significant foreign presence in the Philippine economy.

The Filipino people stand united in the assertion of its sovereignty and the integrity of its territory against foreign incursions and control. The Duterte regime should put the people’s sovereign interests first in its dealings with foreign governments.—Alliance of Concerned Teachers