Options

It’s true, the architect of foreign policy is the president of the republic.

And, as even Beijing has surely noticed, the current Philippine president is reinvigorating the country’s alliance with the United States.

This must be why Senate President Migz Zubiri (sort of) backed the effort of minority Sen. Risa Hontiveros to muster international support for the arbitral ruling on the South China Sea.

Hontiveros’ resolution proposed raising the issue to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Zubiri denies that he and the rest of the super majority watered it down by making it just one of several options open to the executive.

The soft sell may in fact be a better approach, especially after President Marcos initially seemed cool to the idea. Now the Department of Foreign Affairs, which was consulted on the drafting of the Senate resolution along with the Armed Forces of the Philippines, has said it will “carefully assess and calibrate” the options presented.

For Senator Risa, it was good enough that her proposal was approved at all as one of several options.

It may be shooting for the moon. But if other countries are persuaded to see that their national interest is also threatened by Chinese activities that ignore international rules and impede freedom of navigation and flight in the Indo-Pacific, compliance with the arbitral ruling may get UNGA support.

The strongly worded Senate resolution condemning Chinese activities in the West Philippine Sea, and approving as an option the proposal to raise the issue to the UNGA, is the latest manifestation of the end of the Philippine pivot to China.

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Surveys consistently showed that the pivot pursued by Rodrigo Duterte never gained traction among Filipinos. It didn’t stop Chinese island-building and bullying of Filipino fishers and Coast Guard patrols in the West Philippine Sea. It gave the Philippines two bridges across the Pasig, but not much else by way of the promised billions in Chinese investments.

With the end of the pivot, there’s speculation that Beijing is getting involved in Philippine politics, to help install another China-friendly administration in 2028, and why not, a China-friendly Senate as early as 2025.

The speculations have been encouraged by Duterte’s recent visit to Beijing, during which he received the red carpet treatment and a big “good boy” pat from the highest echelons of Chinese officialdom, led by his idol Xi Jinping and newly reappointed Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Nearly all officials of Marcos 2.0, starting with BBM himself, were obviously kept in the dark about the visit. I write “nearly” because Marcos’ BFF, Vice President and education chief Sara Duterte, would be stretching credulity if she claims she didn’t hear even a whisper about her father’s planned visit from her relatives and her extensive network in Davao.

VP Sara’s strained ties with her father are well known. As VP, she has been more like BBM in foreign policy, being friendly with her father’s pet peeves, the US and the EU.

Still, Daughterte carries the surname associated with a China-friendly foreign policy. The speculation is that Beijing will exploit the perceived rift in the UniTeam to advance its interests in the Philippines.

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With the approval of the Senate resolution, there is speculation on what else the Philippine government may do in dealing with China. Will Manila follow the lead of the US and several other countries in blacklisting certain Chinese companies? Will the use of Chinese-owned TikTok and Zoom, for example, be banned in government offices, as Filipino cyber experts have suggested?

Such questions have become louder following the unusual statement from US embassy press attaché Kanishka Gangopadhyay, expressing concern about the involvement of state-owned China Communications Construction Co., through its subsidiary China Harbour Engineering Co. Ltd., in building three artificial islands in Manila Bay for commercial purposes near the US embassy.

Kanishka said the company “has been added to the US Department of Commerce’s Entity List for its role in helping the Chinese military construct and militarize islands in the South China Sea.”

The US embassy has also expressed concern about the environmental impact of multiple reclamation activities in Manila Bay (blamed by Bulacan residents for the massive flooding in their province).

Apart from blacklisting Chinese companies, the Philippines can reduce vulnerability to economic pressure from Beijing. We felt this pressure when China, amid the sea dispute, drastically cut its imports of Philippine products beginning with bananas in March 2012, claiming that pests were found in a shipment. At the time, China was the Philippines’ third largest export market. Chinese tourist visits to the Philippines were also curtailed.

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Australian Ambassador HK Yu, who faced “The Chiefs” on Cignal TV’s One News last month, said her country learned its lesson after being similarly subjected to “trade coercive measures” by Beijing.

Like many countries, Australia’s largest trading partner has been China. At the height of the “Chinese economic coercion,” some $20 billion worth of Austalian exports were affected, the ambassador said.

From this sad experience, “our business sector has learned to diversify, and our government worked hand in hand with the private sector,” she told us.

Noting that “economic power equals strategic power,” she said: “We have also been working to have a strong, robust, resilient economy. We were able to bounce back and continue to grow.”

For the Philippines, such economic diversification can go hand-in-hand with diplomatic initiatives to muster international support behind the arbitral ruling.

On The Chiefs, Ambassador Yu reiterated her government’s support for the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. The Group of Seven and the European Union have issued similar statements of support.

“We never actually looked at this as a simple Philippines versus China issue,” Ambassador Yu told The Chiefs. “This is actually an issue of a rules-based order, and this is one where Australia has always been a big supporter of doing everything in accordance with UNCLOS, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. And as a result, we are with the Philippines when it comes to what’s happening in the South China Sea.”

The Philippine cause may seem like a battle between David and Goliath. But we know the outcome of that fight. And we have friends like Australia, which believe, as Ambassador Yu said, that the issue “is something that one country cannot solve alone.”