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 21st 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.
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