MANILA, Philippines — In 2013, the China-Philippines relations were at low tide. However, given the geographical neighborhood, time-honored exchanges, close economic relations between China and the Philippines, Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua held a firm belief that the Chinese embassy should try its utmost to keep the China-Philippines friendship warm so as to secure a solid foundation for the turnaround of bilateral relations in the future.
Hence, the embassy staff reached out to the grassroots of the Philippines to care for the livelihood of the marginalized groups and common people. Standing out among all the actions was setting up the “Chinese Ambassador Scholarship” so as to help the Filipino outstanding but impoverished students realize their dreams. Since the end of 2013, the CAS started granting selected students from the Philippine Normal University (PNU) and University of the Philippines (UP).
In November 2013, super typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) struck the Philippines, causing devastating damage. The number of typhoon victims reached 11.8 million. After visiting the disaster area, Ambassador Zhao decided to set up additional scholarships to help students in the disaster-stricken areas return to the campus.
Now CAS has become one of the most popular scholarships in PNU. 120 students have benefited from it. Karl Solimpo is one of them.
“When I was a teenager, my dream was to become a teacher. And I am thankful for the Chinese Ambassador Scholarship to help me realize my dream!” said Karl.
After all the hard work, Karl is now a lecturer on Environmental and Earth Science at Grace Christian College, a Chinese school close to the Malacañang Palace.
“Now, I often share my story with my students so that they could know that China’s friendship with the Philippines is solid and substantial.”
Another university where the CAS turned dreams into reality is UP.
According to Niel Kenneth Jamandre, director of the UP Scholarship and Student Affairs Office, the CAS is the only ambassador-named scholarship in UP.
UP has also set up a CAS Fund to make full use of the annual income of the P5 million scholarship as subsidies to help more students.
In addition, Mr. Jamandre said, “The establishment of the CAS has attracted more teachers and students to pay attention to China and make a more objective and independent judgement of what the Sino-Philippine relationship really is.”
Ruth Abegail Licong, 19, is a third-year UP student majored in mass communications. She is interested in pushing forward the cultural exchanges among Asian countries.
In the past four years, the CAS has invested nearly RMB1.9 million into universities such as UP and PNU. There were 178 impoverished Filipino students with excellent academic performance that were funded by the Scholarship.
Currently, among 92 Chinese schools, there have been 140 outstanding high school students who received a scholarship of P20,000 per year and 220 impoverished students who received a fellowship of P10,000 per year.