The nation waited with bated breath for President Rodrigo Duterte to take a strong stance on Chinese incursion in the West Philippine Sea (WPS). When he finally made a statement, many were disappointed that he practically surrendered the Philippines’ claim to these waters.
“The issue of the West Philippine Sea remains to be a question forever until such time that we can take it back,” Duterte remarked in his weekly televised speech on April 19, explaining that pursuing the claim would only result in war.
His statement came weeks after his top honchos, the secretaries of Defense and Foreign Affairs, took turns blasting the entry of Chinese fishing vessels in the WPS, particularly in the Julian Felipe Reef. The reef lies within the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the Philippines, only 175 nautical miles from the town of Bataraza, Palawan.
The Chinese Embassy in the Philippines stated that the Julian Felipe Reef is part of Chinese territory, releasing an emphatic statement that called the reef “Niu’e Jiao,” and claiming that it is part of China’s Nansha Islands. The big question on everyone’s mind: why is Duterte not strongly defending Philippine sovereignty?
Vaccine diplomacy gone awry
A few months after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, China announced that it would soon provide safe and effective vaccines and focus on distributing this to the developing world. China released Sinovac shortly after, and several nations in the ASEAN wanted a supply of the vaccine, including the Philippines. By July 2020, Duterte declared that the Philippines would be “back to normal” soon, all thanks to Chinese assistance.
Despite medical doubts over the efficacy of Sinovac, the Philippine government fought hard to curry Chinese favor and be prioritized in the distribution of the vaccine. Experts coined a term for this – vaccine diplomacy – and this they say is one of the reasons why Duterte seems to avoid angering China, even as hundreds of Chinese vessels intruded in the country’s EEZ.
“We’ve seen that in the past years that President Duterte has always made it a point to extol China, and he has always harped on China’s vaccine as the solution to the current crisis that we are facing. So Duterte has been led into this situation where he as the president cannot say anything very strongly against China,” said law expert Jay Batongbacal, director of the UP Institute for Maritime Affairs & Law of the Sea.
Batongbacal explained that this might be why Secretaries Delfin Lorenzana and Teodoro Locsin are speaking for the administration, as Duterte may be fearing that Sinovac supplies could be affected if he uttered strong statements against China. Build some, lose some This is not the only weak point that might be keeping Pres. Duterte mum on the WPS issue.
The current administration’s grand “Build Build Build” (BBB) program is vastly reliant on a cooperation agreement signed by Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the former’s first visit to China in 2016. In that cooperation agreement, China pledged to provide funding for 30 BBB projects, costing billions of dollars. Some of these multi-billion projects include the Chico River Dam Project and two Philippine railway projects.
All these projects are part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is a large-scale international development scheme aimed at sealing China’s place among global superpowers. However, despite pursuing an “appeasement foreign policy” towards China considering promised funding for infrastructure, economists have observed that the Philippines has yet to receive substantial returns, with many of the promised China-funded projects yet to commence and remain in the pipeline.
Caught in between
With China not delivering its promised funding in time midway into Pres. Duterte’s term, a “limited hard balancing” foreign policy was pursued, with the Philippines reconnecting with the United States as a safeguard against China’s growing assertion of power in the region.
In a study published in 2019, De La Salle University Prof. Renato De Castro said, “Confronted by China’s failure to deliver the promised loans and direct investments to finance the Philippine government’s ‘Build, Build, Build’ program, and increasing naval presence near the artificial islands it constructed in the South China Sea, the Duterte administration has embraced a policy of limited hard balancing. The goal is to develop the Philippines’ external defense capabilities on the account of the dangerous great powers’ competition in the Indo-Pacific region.”
Part of this rebalancing policy involves “maintaining the country’s alliance with the U.S., fostering middle power security partnerships with Japan and Australia; and reluctantly challenging China’s expansion into the South China Sea.” As a weak middle power bereft of any credible defense capabilities, the Philippines, by moving in this policy direction, will be able to chart its destiny in an increasingly multi-polar global order as it strengthens and pursues a comprehensive and strategic alliance or cooperation with its friends and partners in the Indo-Pacific region, De Castro explained.
This hard balancing act went in full display in recent weeks, with the US Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group (TRCSG) entering the South China Sea in early April to conduct operations in the disputed seas, a move that Department of National Defense spokesperson Arsenio Andolong quickly praised, saying that it demonstrated the Philippines’ “strength of alliance” with its long-time American ally.
The recent developments may lead to confusion, but as Harvard scholar Rachel Anne Winston puts it, Duterte’s foreign policy approach is based “upon his respect for powerful leaders, desire for financial resources for his country, fear of a proxy war in the Philippines, and the level of trust he has with China or the United States at any given time.”
This political ambivalence is leaving the Philippines to be literally caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, or as retired Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio describes, this move is akin to “running like a headless chicken when it comes to the WPS.”
With all the favor currying and the confusing rebalancing act, critics say that what’s being clearly sacrificed is Philippine sovereignty.
‘Assert, not desert’
Despite the geopolitical ambivalence, the Philippines still has an ace in its sleeve – the landmark victory in the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, Netherlands in 2016. In the said ruling, the international court invalidated China’s “Nine-Dash Line” claim, clearly favoring the Philippines’ claim over the WPS.
Even though Pres. Duterte has downplayed this ruling in the past years, critics say that it is high time for the administration to reassert the ruling. After all, it is conduct unbecoming for a president to desert, instead of assert, Philippine sovereignty.
“Our territory is part of the heritage of the Filipino people – and their children and grandchildren, and so we should not give it up so easily,” Batongbacal reminded.