China’s growing regional assertiveness, its occupation and militarization of disputed reefs in the South China Sea are viewed with alarm by its neighbors from Japan to Vietnam. For 70 years the Americans have been the dominant military power and it is to them that states threatened by China’s new policies have turned for support. But one of those countries, whose territory is already occupied by the Chinese, has surprisingly chosen to take a different tack.
President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte is heading for Beijing apparently in search of a deal with the Chinese that might even bring to an end their occupation of the Spratly Islands. The quid pro quo for such an agreement would almost certainly be a political alliance that would lead to a commercial and even a military presence for the Chinese in the Philippines.
Such an agreement would impact hard on the American containment policy and would also incur the ire of the Philippines’ neighbors. It is not the sort of deal that should be entered into lightly. If the country’s leader were seen as an adroit political operator working to a long-term plan that would protect his people’s interests and enhance national standing, a trip to Beijing would be regarded, at the very least, as geopolitically fascinating. Rodrigo Duterte may be such a leader but all the evidence suggests that the president of the Philippines is not a political heavyweight with a well-thought-out cunning plan.
Duterte won power with a storming campaign that had many similarities to Donald Trump’s current rabble-rousing bid for the White House. He promised law and order and a clampdown on the corruption that for so long has disfigured Filipino politics. His drive against criminals, specifically drug pushers and the users who steal to fuel their addiction, has shocked not just the outside world but many Filipinos. Duterte’s Trump-style motormouth recently issued the appalling statement that he would be happy to slaughter his country’s three million addicts in the same way that Hitler slaughtered Jews. As it is, some 3,000 pushers and users are already known to have been murdered either by vigilantes or police. These extra-judicial killings have brought calls for Duterte to be tried in the International Criminal Court.
But it has been the president’s foreign policy, his astonishingly abusive remarks about US President Barack Obama and his cavalier attitude to any diplomatic niceties that have brought about even greater international concern. Apart from challenging Washington and the interests of his regional neighbors, what does Duterte imagine that his talks in Beijing are really going to achieve?
This June, after a three-year investigation, the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that the Spratly Islands belonged to the Philippines, that China had no historical territorial claim to them and that their military occupation was illegal. In any other circumstances, the visit by a Philippines president to China might have been expected to involve negotiations to have Beijing respect that ruling. But by very publicly trashing his country’s long alliance with the Americans, Duterte has already thrown away a major bargaining counter. Perhaps he imagines that his intemperate behavior will have endeared him to his Chinese hosts. While they will undoubtedly appreciate the political opportunities he brings, there is not much in the Chinese makeup that will appreciate his political ways.
