SO, YOU LIKE CHINA? HERE IS WHAT A CHINESE PHILIPPINES WOULD LOOK LIKE.
By Robert T. Wagner
For a number of years, friends in the US and Europe have continuously asked me, “Aren’t you afraid the Chinese are going to invade the Philippines”? My response is always the same: “They don’t need to – China already owns it.”
In short, logically minded region-watchers understand that Beijing would never, ever risk causing their money train, aka. the only thing keeping 1.4 billion historically restless people employed and calm, to crash and burn if they were to wage war on Taiwan or the Philippines, thereby destroying their cushy lives of luxury in the Forbidden City.
Xi and his generals know they can’t engage in open hostilities with the West without first seeing their fragile economy turned into a wasteland, then potentially the entire country into a parking lot. The ONLY thing the Chinese care about is money. They may be aggressive like the Borg, but they aren’t suicidal idiots.
Economically dominating a country is the safest and easiest way to ensure fealty. The Japanese learned this the hard way, and English speaker/reader Xi is an ardent observer of history.
For those few Filipinos who seem to be enamored with China, let’s have an open, honest conversation about what a hypothetical Chinese Province of “Liusung,” which is their name for Luzon first coined in 9th-century Hokkienese, written as 呂宋, and still in common use today when referring to the archipelago as a whole, would look like.
First, the Chinese Communist Party’s 1982 Supreme Law, which serves as a sort of faux constitution, is the prime legal instrument that sets forth “a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship.” Almost comically proposing a contradiction in the eyes of western societies, out of which the concept of democracy in fact stemmed, this basically means Chinese citizens are not afforded the ability to choose their own leaders at the national level, and any local elections are subject to “revision” by the CCP. It is a closed-circuit system. You get what they tell you you get, and just shut up about it.
Second, even though Chapter II, entitled “Fundamental Rights and Obligations of Citizens,” surprisingly (at first) provides American-style freedoms, a hidden prefix attached to the second sentence in Article 40 thereof states, “Except in cases necessary for national security or criminal investigation…” This negates any protections the law might afford Chinese citizens, whether living in China or abroad, against arbitrary arrest, prosecution, imprisonment, or execution. Foreigners living in China have no access to judicial recourse at all and are frequently detained indefinitely for use as political hostages to pressure western and Asian governments like Japan. This is why foreign companies are leaving, en masse.
Lastly, and most importantly, Chinese citizens are de jure (by law) possessions of the State, a legal condition that is part and parcel of every dictatorship on the planet, past or present. Want a passport to travel out of the country? The CCP will issue you one, but only after you sign a document that says you:
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Must return whenever the State demands.
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Are prohibited from saying or writing anything critical of the CCP or the people of China.
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Are “obligated to carry out orders of the CCP in your host country if so directed.”
And that means exactly what you think it does. Put bluntly, anytime you see a mainland Chinese citizen outside China, it means he or she is there as an agent of the CCP, no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. POGO’s are just fronts.
If we place this template over a place like the Philippines, which would require Beijing to spend enormous, virtually impossible amounts of money and effort to bring 118 million free-wheeling Filipinos into compliance, quite the depressing scenario takes shape.
Gone would be the days when Korean K-Dramas, Willie, or AlDub could be seen on TV or online. Facebook, WhatsApp, and Viber would be blocked. Vice Ganda and Ate Gay would be cancelled, as public display of homosexuality is illegal. Worst of all, families could no longer ride down the national highway without helmets, Bunso on the handlebars and the other two kids squeezed in between mom and dad, neither of whom have driver’s licenses, on an unregistered scooter. It would be Filipino hell.
Oh, and forget ever accusing Xi Jinping of being a cocaine addict.
A Chinese Philippines? Is that really what you want?
Go for it, my friends.
