AS I start typing this column piece for the week, I read from our Ambassador to China H.E. Chito Sta. Romana’s FB post (with photos of scores of pallets holding countless boxes of vaccines) of another planeload of 500,000 doses of Sinovac vaccines to arrive in Manila on April 29th. This will make China’s vaccine donations and purchased deliveries to a flat three-million doses between March and April.
No amount of anti-China propaganda from the anti-China elements in Philippine media, politics and the compromised academics (who are already hired hacks of the CSIS and AMTI like Heydarian and Batongbacal) can diminish the goodwill from China’s indefatigable Good Samaritan role in providing solutions to the pandemic crisis here in the country and in the world.
Even in India where anti-China sentiments have been deliberately stoked by the ruling political class as well as by its budding geopolitical ally, the U.S., China has blunted popular anti-China sentiments by being the first (while the US dilly-dallies over rules and profits) to provide 11,000 oxygen concentrators to India gasping to provide oxygen to millions of Covid-19 patients in their hospitals.
China’s persistent goodwill has been expressed consistently in very many ways over the decades.
Few people know it but the global economy was saved from collapse by China when the 2008 US Financial Crisis hit America reverberated around the world, stabilized only by China’s massive stimulus spending that launched China’s own “Build, Build, Build,” boosting consumption and imports.
China rolled out the Belt and Road Initiative as well as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as well as the BRICS Bank in the decade past, and two years ago reaffirmed its growing role as the world’s biggest market for imports from the rest of the world by launching the China International Import Expo (CIIE) promising to buy $30-trillion of goods and $10-trillion services in the next 15 years.
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The U.S. is a prime beneficiary of China’s goodwill, despite the U.S. declaration of China as a “strategic competitor” China has continued to open its arms for conciliation repeatedly, declaring that it has no intention of displacing the U.S. as the primary world power, giving concessions to Trump’s Trade War, keeping its market open for U.S. companies to continue its hundreds of billions of profits.
Yet, despite China’s goodwill towards the US, the declining superpower is threatened by its own fears of loss of dominance, loss of client states it calls “allies” like South Korea and the Philippines, loss of control of other nations’ raw materials supplies, and maybe even fear of justice and retribution for its Century of Wars against Third World countries and the millions of lives lost.
In relation to the Philippines, China has without fail treated its Asian neighbor with fairness, care and charity. China never disturbed any occupied island or feature in the South China Sea that the Philippines had already occupied since the 70s, unlike Vietnam which grabbed Pugad Island right from under the Philippine Marines’ feet in 1975.
China has maintained a respectful though firm position on the other countries’ claims in the South China Sea while standing by its own claims unflinchingly, but keeps open the channel of constructive dialogue and has achieved notable progress with the Philippines such as in the 60-40 sharing in the Recto Bank oil-gas joint project favoring the Philippines.
China has been a stickler for the “rules-based order,” contrary to U.S. and Western allegations. China has followed UNCLOS rules to the letter in applying the “opt out” condition to compulsory arbitration. The Philippines declared to “opt out” but skirted this in filing the unilateral and arbitrary arbitration suit, a distortion that continues to be used by US propaganda to becloud the real issues.
Vietnam has also found China’s record of firmness and friendliness both challenging and enlightening, and in the newest incarnation of Vietnam’s policy towards China its newly inaugurated President Nguyen Xuan Phuc declared that Vietnam seeks stable and peaceful relations with China while VCP’s General-Secretary Nguyen Phu Truong said “US has no chance to use sovereignty issue to divide the region” revealing the Asian solidarity spirit.
The latest premeditated “tempest in a teacup” in the “orchestrated conflicts” (term used by Manila Times columnist Dan Steinbock) over the “220 Maritime Militia boats” fake news spun to a “withdrawal of support” rumor against President Duterte failed to weaken Duterte or the good relations with China. After all the sound and fury, China’s goodwill projects rise to the top of the news again.
In June, the China-donated Estrella-Pantaleon Bridge will be opened, then in September the Binodo-Intramuros Bridge, next will be the Davao Expressway funded by China, and more project delivered every quarter thereafter.
All the black propaganda are short lived, the goodwill projects and aid are monuments in physical reality and the fraternal spirit ties the two nations’ hearts together.
(Herman Tiu Laurel is an author, writer and founder of the Phil-BRICS Strategic Studies think tank. Join his: “Power Thinks” with Ka Mentong Laurel and guests – Every Wednesday 6pm Live on Global Talk News Radio [GTNR] on Facebook and Talk News TV on YouTube; and Every Sunday 8 to 10am on RP1 738 on your AM radio dial.)