Opinion: Diplomacy and international relations in a brave new world
In the company of colleagues from a previous engagement, I shared what’s keeping us busy at the firm these days.
With pleasure and, quite frankly, with pride, I shared that we’ve been assiduously keeping the public informed and countering dis- and malinformation.
The many issues now apart from impeachment call for more critical assessment, especially with the next presidential election around the corner.
If we do not do anything and just allow unscrupulous groups to continue spreading false information, we might just find ourselves taken aback and disgruntled in the end.
Of course, when asked which of the many issues we’re facing is most critical, many would respond rather spontaneously that it is impeachment.
Thanks to the last 41 trial days, every day, many are tuned in to the live telecast of the trial; every media, from the mainstream radio, television and print to the social media, everything that you see and hear would be reporting and or commenting on what happened during the hearing each day.
And thanks to social media, in an instant, many have become lawyers and experts.
As many have something to say, expect there’ll be countless disinformation.
This reminds me of a 1993 song of my favorite artist Sting, a decade before Facebook was launched and leading to the age of information in hyperdrive.
Aptly, the song says “I never saw no miracle of science, that didn’t go from a blessing to a curse”.
The age of social media boosted the grander age of information; and the impact has been far-reaching that it led to more and more remarkably effective instruments.
The immediate result was good overall but now it also shows a rather pernicious side.
Everything has become borderless, including self-interest, that cyberspace has become a veritable playground and tool for those pushing a particular agenda. Everyone, not only experts and or academics should take heed.
The age of information hyperdrive is both a boon and a bane, especially depending on which part of the world you belong and your capacity as a state.
And in this current international order of things, both the good and the bad are empowered by the extensive and pervasive capability made available by technology.
Today’s world is a lot more complicated than we used to know and the tools and initiatives different peoples now employ have become more sophisticated.
Even the proverbial “no rest for the wicked” doesn’t quite cut it. Everyone has to make an effort to keep up with the demands of the times and rather convoluted ways that many seem to resort to.
If we don’t, that we fail to be nimble as required by the situation, the price is as steep as one’s very own existence.
Nothing is what it seems in today’s day and age. That pretty much sums up everything we encounter these days. The difference between reel and real used to be clear.
The former is for entertainment, and the latter is serious and have implications to our day-to-day lives.
Today, what is often considered real actually turns out to be unreal; even the meaning of reel has changed and is now associated more with social media.
This is the environment we have to fully understand if we are to survive.
This is the environment that everyone, every nation in the world has to contend with, regardless of means and circumstances.
This is the backdrop of everything that’s happening in the world, the stage of every initiative of every state, of every organization and institution that has a stake or agenda in the world.
And most importantly for us, this is the setting we have to meticulously understand if we are to deal with the many challenges we now face especially the most fundamental one that affects practically everything in the country.
And the most fundamental challenge we now face, in fact arguably by the whole world, is the resurgence of China.
Its sheer size and weight is its power, and it is not only aware of this power but is also unreluctant in using it in everyway.
The nine-dash line and the Belt and Road initiative are two perfect examples and references of how and what China is today.
These two China projects bring to bear every instrument that are now available and they do have compared to what they failed to have least decades ago and definitely since losing the Opium war.
Make no mistake, China is today’s world’s fox in sheep’s clothing, and we have to be careful in dealing with it.
As the quintessential Sinologist Martin Jacques succinctly captured in his 2009 book, China is not like any other country today.
It is not a nation-state as many of the countries are but a “civilization state”. As such, history plays a fundamental role in what it does and how it acts.
In fact, it is the very basis of everything that it’s been doing. And this is a plus and a minus. It is a plus as it presupposes its integrity as a united people and therefore possesses an undeniable sense of being.
It is a minus however as this reliance to history could be a fixation that it will not be inclined to see the world today as legitimate and proper.
History is fundamentally good if it serves as a key reference of a people’s identity; it’s a potent factor that ensures the country’s unity, translating to a country’s will power to do what is best.
It has an insidious side however as it could amount to obsession of the past and thus preclude the acceptance of what is now real and apparent.
Given all these, you have to be wary when you encounter a rather simplistic take on anything that’s happening, especially on anything related to China and its initiatives in any part of the world.
In a way, the growing prevalence of simplistic arguments in a rather complicated issue of international relations is good.
In fact, this tack seems to be being fostered by some quarters. What is not apparent is that this strategy is easily a giveaway to anyone who’s carefully observing.
Constricting complex issues to simplistic responses and or views only nudges you to take a serious thought.
The insistence to “keep on talking with China” is a perfect example of diminishing a complicated issue to something simplistic.
In the first place, I don’t think we even stopped talking. Even if recently, the secretary of national defense has declared that “direct defense talks” with Beijing “are currently ‘impossible’”, it should not be mistaken that we actually stopped talking to China.
If at all, it is the actions and declarations of China, especially by and through their ambassador here in Manila, that’s contradicting this espousal of keeping the lines open.
Nothing wrong with keeping the lines open. To insist that we should just keep on talking and not explore other options is another matter entirely, however.
Limiting ourselves is to denigrate ourselves and in the process all that is left of us is to be solicitous and thus at the mercy of China.
Even if one insists that China is to be trusted, any rational state will always keep its options.
Regardless of who you’re dealing with, you wouldn’t want to act, short of categorically declaring that you will just be doing anything they wish for you to do.
I can almost hear the Duterte supporters reacting and dismissing making use of any means available to pursue our interests as provoking and wanting to go to war.
This tack conveniently ignores the fact that we are the one at the defensive end.
To argue that we are the one provoking is to assume that it is not China that started all these problems in the first place.
If China did not unduly claim short of the whole South China Sea, we wouldn’t be having any of the issues that we now face.
There wouldn’t be any need for anyone, senator or secretary to respond and say anything that will not be appreciated by the other party.
And that’s not even all there is to it. It’s not only the WPS that China seem to be interested with. If that’s the only thing they’re after, China need not assiduously do anything to undermine the country from within.
In May 2024, Guo Hua Ping, a Chinese national posing as a Filipino and successfully getting elected as Mayor Alice Guo of Bamban, Tarlac was uncovered in a Senate hearing.
This would not have happened if authorities weren’t investigating illegal activities in the area and raiding in March 2024 a 20-acre Baofu compound in Bamban.
That investigation led to her discovery and the rather incremental development of her identity as a Filipino starting as early as 2010.
This apart from what was originally being investigated, i.e. human trafficking, crypto-scam operations and POGO operation.
There were also firms recently discovered to be producing sub-standard iron bars for construction, one in northern Mindanao and another in Pampanga.
Sub-standard iron bars are not only construction hazards but have also flooded the market with unusually cheap materials affecting legitimate business.
Both firms are owned by Chinese nationals and apart from cheap iron bars, both were found to be also producing toxic radioactive materials.
The question is for what? One can only put two and two things together.
By all means, any person of any nationality may be involved in illegal activity without the instigation or involvement of the state.
That would have been an easy assumption if Alice Guo was the only one discovered to be with a fake identity. As it turns out there are several others, one Jucan Hong was arrested in Legazpi, Albay.
A PLA jet fighter pilot was arrested in an aviation academy in Iba, Zambales posing as a student, and there’s Deng Yuanqing, a Chinese control and automation software engineer, a graduate of PLA-controlled University of Science and Technology in Nanjing.
And there are more that the government is now really seriously looking at our immigration processes.
Not only are these Chinese nationals engaged in illegal activities, they are also pretending to be Filipinos, eavesdropping in key government installations and engaging in mining and other national security sensitive businesses and industries.
These are clandestine operations operating covertly, and there are those that are being done in plain sight.
Check out the provenance of fake news and or any and all disinformation in cyberspace and you’ll be surprised that more than half is not even Filipino but Chinese.
And disinformation and more importantly and rather more dangerous malinformation are not only in social media but also in traditional media, in books and even in big, sponsored events, which have become common.
Some political leaders are even obviously echoing and promoting China’s narrative. All in all, one can only conjecture the objective, which is now apparent, to sow discord and eventually lead to turmoil.
Meanwhile, escalation continues. The clandestine operations from within the Philippines continues while activities directly by China also escalates.
As the effort to sow discord show results, instantaneously there’s now a movement for an independent Mindanao.
Interestingly, this proposed independent Mindanao, conveniently includes Palawan which is adjacent to the West Philippine Sea. By some serendipity it’s been reported that China is supporting this move.
Then some supposed Chinese scholars and academics came up with interesting research. Batanes is now declared to be part of China as putatively revealed in history. This clearly is no longer just about WPS and just days back, Chinese ships have been around Mindoro and Batangas.
In fact, even before, China has been going around, even in in the Eastern seaboard, at the Benham rise to the Leyte gulf.
There are just so much to consider to just insist we keep on talking and not explore any and all options available to us. In the first place, given everything there is in today’s world, for certain every state is not limiting themselves to just one tact. One can’t help but ask more and more questions every time a leader, or anyone in the country insists we just keep on talking.