Teodoro: China to blame for suspicion on Chinese nationals

MANILA, Philippines — China has itself to blame for suspicion being cast on Chinese nationals, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said, referring to its intelligence law mandating every Chinese company or citizen to be an agent of the Chinese intelligence establishment.

In an interview with Hoover Institution’s “Battlegrounds,” Teodoro said there are Chinese who were able to expand criminal syndicate activities, which also weakened the domestic economy through internet gaming, gambling, human trafficking and drugs.

They have also been able to assume fake citizenships and identities to enable them or their agents, or people under their influence.

“China has only itself to blame. If we must digress right now – because of their 2017 intelligence law, which mandates every Chinese company or citizen to be an agent of the Chinese intelligence establishment,” Teodoro said.

“They have only themselves to blame if we are suspicious of any Chinese national. How do we know what the bonafide is of this person?” he said. 

The secretary noted that Chinese companies were able to acquire land close to a strategic Philippine military base.

In September, Teodoro said local officials should have been aware of and raised concern on the closeness of the location of the Philippine offshore gaming operation hub in Bamban, Tarlac to a military base in Capas, Tarlac.

The gang-run scam farm in Bamban, raided in March and linked to dismissed Bamban mayor Alice Guo as one of the masterminds, is close to Camp O’Donnell.

Teodoro said the cases of undocumented aliens and drugs are being addressed by the Philippine government.

He noted that another tactic China uses is the attempt to influence local governments by sister cityhood initiatives, where a city or a locality gets favored treatment from China.

Research grants given to domestic educational institutions are used purportedly as cover for area and environmental scanning.

“We are watching out with a keen eye on these activities, but then there are the tactics, once again, of misinformation and disinformation,” Teodoro added. 

The Philippines, he said, wants to create a more robust deterrent capability, but China immediately said that these acts are destabilizing to the region when they themselves have one of the largest nuclear arsenals, ballistic capability and other capabilities which the world does not know of, because the government in China is a closed one.

Teodoro also mentioned China’s United Front Works tactics, the department within the Ministry of State Security which advances Chinese Communist Party interests, with a goal to recreate an international order to be dominated by China.

Through the Safe Cities Initiative, China financed a lot of command and control mechanisms for cities where they would install CCTV cameras and facial recognition software.

“However, we know the costs of this, the cost would be Chinese monitoring and Chinese information gathering. And so, the government is well aware of this because the Chinese cannot deny the fact that a lot of the exit points of information illegally gathered had IP addresses in China. That is a fact that they cannot controvert,” Teodoro said.

“I know I’ll receive a lot of brickbats over this, but that’s the truth and the truth hurts,” he stressed.