China just claimed South China Sea

When China last week guaranteed safe passage through the South China Sea, where tensions are high amid squabbling among neighbors over various territories, the Philippines should have let the comment pass instead of regarding it as a welcome reassurance.

But then, the Philippine foreign policy outlook apparently is not on the same level as that of China’s. In other words, these two countries laying competing claims on several islands in the South China Sea do not see eye to eye.

What to the Philippines was an unequivocal guarantee that China was not about to ratchet up tensions by tightening its squeeze, probably by military means, was to the Chinese a simple but firm declaration that it owned the South China Sea and all the islands there in question.

 By guaranteeing safe passage, China was issuing an assurance no one else can make but the owner. All the other parties to the disputes in the South China Sea such as Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines have not issued similar guarantees because they cannot.

 The United States, which is not a party to the dispute, has previously issued a similar assurance of safe and free passage through this very vital body of water. But that guarantee is born not of ownership but of military superiority, much like what the police tells the community.

But just like in many communities, nobody is taking the police seriously. In the case of the US, it is clearly in awe, even in fear, of China, the bad boy in the hood. At the Republican convention, Mitt Romney twitted Vladimir Putin but never China. Obama? He hides behind Hillary.  

China’s assurance is different from that of the US. It carries with it an assertion of authority, much like a landowner kindly but firmly telling would-be trespassers that he is not going to shoot them if he catches them on his land.

And just like what our hypothetical landowner clearly implied but left out of the conversation — his finger is off the trigger for as long as trespassers try not to smell his roses — so did China leave unsaid the matter of who was in control.

Not that there was ever any need to emphasize the obvious. For while it was twirling a lollipop in front of everybody’s face in the form of a safe passage guarantee through the South China Sea, it was in fact digging in and fortifying all its claims

 That is why it was strange — okay naive — for the Philippines to jump at once at the first sign of what it thought was a thawing of China’s hardline stance, marked by recent naval displays of power in our waters.

 Whatever softening the Philippines saw in China’s behavior is only for p.r. Just like the Philippines, China, at the time it gave the reassurance, was headed for Vladivostok for the APEC Summit.

Surely we did not expect China to head for that very important gathering of Asia Pacific  leaders lugging along a conspicuously heavy baggage of bellicose foreign policy. Or did we? At any rate, how stupid for us to miss the difference between China’s words and its actions.

As this was written, the Philippine delegation to Russia was still frantically trying to arrange a meeting between our President Aquino and China’s Hu Jin Tao on the sidelines of the summit.

What the meeting seeks to achieve, I don’t know. But what is clear to me is that what Aquino and Hu may talk about will certainly not return to Philippine sovereignty the territories China already grabbed from us. In all likelihood, and that is if the meeting materializes, Aquino and Hu will talk of reducing tensions, which is fine for both sides considering China already accomplished most of its objectives, and the two leaders will exit smiling — Aquino clueless, Hu triumphantly smug.