Opinion

Abetted by crooked officials, China is grabbing our lands

GOTCHA - Jarius Bondoc - The Philippine Star

June 28, 2024 | 12:00am

China not only is grabbing our seas. It’s also targeting our land territory by coopting the government.

“There’s a creeping invasion,” security expert former interior secretary Rafael Alunan analyzes. Signs are clear:

• In October 2023, the NBI raided a house in plush Valle Verde subdivision, Pasig City. Arrested were six Chinese nationals and two Filipino cohorts.

In their possession were assault weapons marked “People’s Republic of China.” Plus badges designating “blasting team,” “reconnaissance team,” “support team,” “assault team,” “machinegun team” and “sniper team.”

Valle Verde is but one of many gated communities beside Camp Aguinaldo, the Armed Forces general headquarters.

Alunan wonders, “How many more are harboring sleeper cells within striking distance from our centers of gravity around the country – Malacañang, Congress, Supreme Court, military camps, local governments? A Chinese state-owned telco has towers in our camps.”

• Rifles, grenades and Chinese military uniforms have been interdicted in gambling enclaves in Metro Manila, Pampanga and Tarlac. The last two are near Basa Air Base, Clark Air Base, Subic Naval Base, Camp Servillano Aquino and Fort Magsaysay.

• Chinese students, tourists, traders and workers are flocking to strategic sites. Recently exposed was the surge of 460 “exchange students” in Cagayan. The province hosts two AFP camps where US troops train. It faces independent Taiwan, which Beijing mislabels a “renegade province.”

The students speak no English or Filipino. They rarely attend classes but pay up to P2 million each to obtain college degrees, say UP professor Chester Cabalza and Cagayan State University head Fr. Ranhilio Aquino.

• Unearthed too was a jump in Chinese retirement visa grantees: 30,000 as of mid 2022, when President Duterte’s term ended.

Most of the Chinese “students” and “retirees” are in their mid-30s, the age of soldiery, notes Senator Nancy Binay.

• In 2016-2018, 3.12 million Chinese nationals obtained residency. Some work in gambling hubs, others in China-funded reclamations. “Immigration floodgates were thrown open in one of the most remarkable subversions in recent history,” Demetrius Cox writes in Journal of Political Risk. “Duterte increased Philippine populations, then at 103 million, by three percent.”

Invasion has been ongoing since the early 2010s using investment fronts, Alunan says. Chinese nationals wangled mining concessions in Zambales, Ilocos, Catanduanes, Homonhon Island in Eastern Samar, Agusan, Surigao, Palawan and Tawi-Tawi.

“Those mines consist of thousands of hectares – highlands overlooking resource-rich and all-important West Philippine Sea, Benham Rise, Surigao Strait and Sibutu Strait,” Alunan says.

He recounts attending a 1988 conference in Washington D.C. where a Chinese two-star general brandished a 50-year China development plan. “That for China meant dominance of world economy, finance, diplomacy, technology, communications, information, politics, military – all aspects of asymmetrical warfare.”

That’s when China grabbed WPS reefs: Zamora (Subi), Kagitingan (Fiery Cross), McKennan (Hughes), Calderon (Cuarteron), Mabini (Johnson South) and Burgos (Gaven). Attempted coups d’état rocked the Cory Aquino admin then.

In 1989, the People’s Liberation Army vice chief declared the Two Island Chains of Defense. Those formed a Great Wall at sea along western and eastern Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan and Philippines.

The US in 1990 abandoned its five military bases in the Philippines. China annexed Panganiban (Mischief) in 1992 and Panatag (Scarborough) in 2012.

China co-opts Filipino national and local government units by exploiting our officials’ three weakest points: unpatriotic, corrupt, inept.

Obvious collaborators with the enemy are crooked Customs, Immigration and police officers; fire and building inspectors; retirement, anti-money laundering, higher education, freeport and gaming authorities; labor, consular, provincial and city bureaucrats. Also weak-willed lawmakers, judges, prosecutors.

China’s visionary leader Deng Xiaoping must have foreseen the Communist Party’s direction as far back as 1974. He told the United Nations General Assembly:

“If one day China should change its color and turn into a superpower, if it too plays the world tyrant and everywhere subject others to its bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify it as social-imperialist, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.”