China prospect and Aquino’s dilemma

Given that President Benigno S. Aquino III recently likened China’s leaders as Hitler-like and compared China’s bullying as similar to Nazi Germany, I would like to share some notes that I had a few years back when I participated in the China Impact and New Asia International Conference organized by the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies at Tamkang University, Taiwan. The conference discussed the impact of China in a New Asia convergence scenario. 

International relations experts, sociologists and political scientists from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines presented their papers on China and the rise of Asia in the 21^st century. Discussants from Oxford University, Chung Cheng University, Taiwan and Nanjing University, China reviewed my paper The China Prospect and the New Asia Convergence. I received a few notable comments and suggestions that include writing a book on the topic. In fact, I am done writing three chapters and hope to finish and launch the book in 2016.

These chapters are excerpts of papers that I presented in Taiwan, Australia and the Philippines. It discusses the history and legacy of China in the humanities and the liberal arts, China’s dreams and visions for 2100 and my take on the Spratly Island controversy in a futures context and the Asia Pacific.

The paper became a recommended reading for a strategic foresight course at the Canberra for Defense and Strategic Studies in Australia and was recently published in the Journal of Futures Studies.

In this background that I would like to give my take on the China-Nazi statement and critique Aquino’s panic-stricken approach to the Spratly Island dispute.

First, IMHO, Aquino’s statement was silly and frenetic at best. His statement was uncalled for and inappropriate in context. It could provoke a lot of unintended consequences at different levels of engagements—political, social, economic, cultural, trade, military, labor, regional peace and security, etc. in the Asia Pacific. As two international relations experts noted the Spratly Island controversy is a ticking time bomb and a tinderbox waiting to explode. We wouldn’t want to trigger a backlash and endanger the lives and futures of hundreds and thousands of Filipino expatriates and migrants in China in particular to those who are living and working in Macau, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.   According to the Department of Foreign Affairs there are roughly around 12,000 overseas Filipinos based in Mainland China working as professionals, architects, civil engineers, students and domestic helpers.

Aquino, for all that I know, could be using the Spratly issue to divert public attention from the Tacloban controversy and the government’s bungling post-disaster response, the growing rebellion in Mindanao, the energy crisis, jobless growth, poverty, the cybercrime law, smuggling, human trafficking, declining popularity and trust in surveys among other issues that confronts his administration.

His opinions on issues of the day and his stubbornness are turning into a political death wish, “a political suicide” to say the least to quote a political analyst. Aquino’s comment reminded me of a meme that appeared on Facebook that branded the Aquino presidency as Panggulo (troublemaker) rather than Pangulo (leader).

I would not want to use the word “annoyer” here since that would be too much to describe the President but China perhaps would gladly paint him as such. In fact, they have repeatedly portrayed President Aquino as childish or to use their exact words “amateurish” in world history and international politics. China might even take the President’s statement as the “noise” before a defeat or a tactic without a strategy to paraphrase Sun Tzu in the Art of War. 

In fact, China has responded and replied by saying that it fought Hitler and aligned with the Allied Powers to defeat fascist Japan and Germany in WWII. The intent was to correct his worldview and, again, offered the path of reconciliation. If it was a boxing match, in my view, China would be Pacquiao and Aquino would be Mayweather. All talk but afraid to confront China on the Spratly dispute at the diplomatic level head on. My point here is that Aquino need not have to resort to such a tactic to push our claim in the Spratly’s.

For while it is true that the Spratly dispute is a complex issue, it could even be “the black swan” for new concepts and structures of international politics to emerge like the Asian Union and Global Governance, Aquino could adopt a conciliatory approach to resolve our dispute. We must realize that, despite their “word wars”, China, Japan and South Korea have always sorted to some forms of alternative dispute mechanisms to resolve a crisis and secure peace in the Asia Pacific.   

It might be wiser for Aquino to push for reconciliation without sacrificing our claim through joint ventures, bilateral, multilateral or negotiated agreements, cake sharing (as proposed by China, we can make a counterproposal, a transcendence is possible here), shelving the claims (similar to Antarctic treaty), communal ownership among other options forwarded to resolve the territorial dispute. The case of South Korea and Japan on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands (communal access and development) and China and Vietnam could emerge, if handled in a way Asians resolve their dispute, as models for territorial disputes in the future.

Last year, China tried to reach out to Vietnam and Brunei to promote peace and partnership. The two communist States planned and set up three special joint working groups to boost infrastructure, finance coordination and speed up maritime cooperation in the disputed territory.

Similarly, Malaysia and Brunei continue to deepen their engagements with China at various levels of trade and diplomacy and Taiwan and China as well has continued to cooperate in various contexts.

Now the question is it possible for us to resolve the conflict in a “Z” scenario that is to imagine alternatives and force ourselves to think outside of the box (trade off) and resolve our dispute with China beyond a dangerous game or worst case scenario (status quo to isolation and direct military confrontation)? I suggest that we shoot or go for a trade-off, a win-win scenario to prevent a direct military engagement but then again that is Aquino’s dilemma. 

But I would prefer to see some sort of a game-changing scenario and I hope for an image of a future where war, death and destruction was prevented and that both countries have agreed to resolve the dispute in a progressive and demilitarize manner. We might need to look at the dispute as a dispute of relations rather than as a dispute of things as one South Korean analyst suggested. We should look at the dispute as an opportunity for peace, as a prospect for the Philippines and China to rise together in the so-called Asian century.