How to stand against a bully!

One day, years ago, the message contained in the lyrics of a Bee Gees’ song pinned me to an embarrassing corner. “I started a joke which started the whole world crying. But I didn't see that the joke was on me” It happened when friends of mine, asked, over a cup of coffee why my two daughters, Beatriz and Charisse, had to take up bachelor’s degree in Psychology. My response was quick. I intended it to be a joke. “They wanted to understand their father -me”

Indeed, my friends got pensive but suddenly burst into uncontrolled laughter when one of them said “lisora diay nimo sabton nga pagka amahan bai oi, eskuwelahan man gyud ka og psychology para masabtan!

That incident flashed into my memory when I shared, lately, with some other friends, my idea that Communist China is a bully. It was supposed to be a joke like what the Bee Gees sang. But, I got instead embarrassed when one of them asked me what is a psychologist definition of bullying. I panicked and my daughters were not there to supply an answer. After punching “what is bullying” into my cellphone, I almost immediately learned that bullying is unwanted, aggressive, and typically repeated behavior that involves a real or perceived power imbalance between the person doing the harm and the target. The behavior is intentional and aims to dominate, coerce, humiliate, or cause physical or emotional distress.” Oh my, what I learned exposed my lack of a background in Psychology. Strictly speaking, therefore, a bully is a natural person and not a state like Red China.

Even then, if, according to the internet, a main type of physical bullying is “Hitting, kicking, pushing, tripping, spitting, or damaging someone's personal property” the internet, in effect, describes China, supposedly a Peoples Republic, as a bully. The Chinese coast guards spit into our territorial sovereignty when they continue to patrol deep inside the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone. The West Philippine Sea belongs to the Philippines, not to China. That is international law. No less than the permanent international court of arbitration has so ruled.

It was worse than bullying when a Chinese coast guard ship intentionally rammed a Filipino-owned civilian fishing vessel and when the Philippine vessel sank, the Chinese left the Filipino fishermen to die. It was not just the kind of bullying which my psychologist daughters could conceptualize. It was, from my lawyer’s view, physical and criminal act.

So much for those distinctive, non-intellectual discussions of bullying. Let us instead talk of what we can do, as one nation, to counter Chinese invasion into our shores.

We are a strong 115 million people. The one thing we can do is NOT, repeat NOT, to contribute to Chinese economy. We must remember that in 2025, the China-Philippine trade imbalance was outrageously disadvantageous to us. We bought Chinese products worth nearly $35 billion while we sold Philippine goods to China worth just less than $5 billion. In my ordinary mind, we help fund the Chinese invaders, we help them in shouldering the cost of the military facilities which they built on some parts of the West Philippine Sea, we help China acquire their water canons which they train upon our coast guard, we help defray for the cost of a Chinese fighter jet (and pilot) which flew by a propeller driven Philippine air craft which was patrolling Philippine skies.

We, 115 million Filipinos, must stop buying Chinese made products, whatever these are like from toothpicks to cars. We need to spend our money to buy Philippine goods like Happy toothpaste and Sarao jeeps, and be proud to help our own economy. That can be our contribution to stand against a bully.