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Joseph MicallefAddressing a group of 200 Philippine and Chinese businessmen at the Great Hall of the People on Oct. 20, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte dramatically announced that, “America had lost” and that “China had won.” He also announced the “separation” of the Philippines from the United States.

At the meeting, which was also attended by Chinese Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli, Duterte announced that he had “realigned myself in your ideological flow,” and also threatened to seek closer ties with Russia and “tell him (Vladimir Putin) that there are three of us against the world.” He also announced that the two countries would engage in bilateral negotiations in their dispute over ownership of the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.

The announcement highlighted a dramatic trip by Duterte to China in which Beijing pulled out all the stops to welcome the Philippine president with the sort of pomp and ceremony typically reserved for a major power. According to Ramon Lopez, the Philippines’s Trade Secretary, some $13.5 billion trade and investment deals were expected to be signed as a result of the visit.

The announcement marked a dramatic reversal in Manila’s historic foreign policy alignment and represented a stunning setback in Washington’s efforts to build a regional coalition backstopped by U.S. military power to contain Chinese expansionism in the South and East China Seas.

Duterte has been sharply critical of the Obama administration and the U.S. following criticisms of the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers by his administration. The Philippine president has unleashed torrents of expletive laden criticisms of the U.S. president, prompting the White House to abruptly cancel a planned meeting between Obama and Duterte during the recent G20 conference.

The next day, Trade Minister Ramon Lopez, tried to walk back some of Duterte’s comments, emphasizing that the Philippines would maintain their trade and economic ties with the United states and the West.

Significantly, Duterte has not asked the U.S. to relinquish its five military bases in the Philippines nor has he moved to abrogate the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (ECDA) with the U.S.

Since being elected president in June, Duterte has quickly gained a reputation for flamboyant and controversial policies as well as an acerbic and militant style. It’s unclear at this point whether Duterte’s new political realignment with China represents a bargaining stance with the U.S. or the beginning of a new, tectonic reassignment in the international relations of southeast Asia.

Both China and the U.S. are key trade partners for the Philippines. China is the Philippines’ second largest trading partner and third largest export market in 2016. The total value of U.S. trade with the Philippines was around US$26 billion, placing it behind the US$33 billion in the total value of trade with China. The U.S. is, however, the Philippines’ largest foreign investor.

Beijing has made political and military control of the South and East China Seas a key goal of its regional foreign policy. Chinese militarization of the islands it has been building and expanding in the region has raised alarms among its neighbours causing historic enemies like Vietnam and the United States and Japan and the Philippines to forge closer military ties and expand military cooperation. In June, the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that China’s seizure of the Philippines’ Scarborough Shoal had violated Manilla’s sovereignty.


Turmoil in the South China Sea by Joseph Micallef


Duterte’s pivot to China may be an attempt to mitigate the consequences of that ruling (one that Beijing found deeply embarrassing and that it has declared it will ignore) on Philippines’ China trade.

It may also underscore the effectiveness of China’s hard and soft diplomacy, the willingness to act unilaterally in seizing and fortifying disputed islands and shoals in the region and using its growing military strength to intimidate its neighbours, while at the same time also proffering its soft diplomacy of investment and access to China’s huge internal markets.

It may also underscore the relative failure of the Obama’s administration much vaunted “pivot” to Asia. Although there has been an expansion in bilateral military cooperation with a number of countries in the region, the centerpiece of that policy, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the proposed free trade area in the Asia-Pacific region, appears to be stillborn, with both presidential candidates expressing their opposition to its implementation.

Ultimately, Chinese ambitions to control the East and South China Sea, a region that hosts some US$5 trillion in yearly world trade, will prove to be incompatible to U.S. objectives for open and unfettered access to those waters.

Duterte’s dramatic announcement may be nothing more than empty rhetoric on the part of a controversial and flamboyant Philippine leader, or the first step in Beijing’s ambition to restore China’s historic hegemonic role in southeast Asia.

Joseph Micallef is a historian, best-selling author and, at times, sardonic commentator on world politics. 

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