Odd man out! That was what someone called me, many years ago, when I wrote to boycott Chinese products. To him, I was like a proverbial lone wolf howling uselessly to an unheeding pack. Unfortunately, I don’t remember anymore who he was. Or I might have chosen to forget him. A day after my article appeared in this paper, I was sipping my favorite cappuccino at Dean’s Street. This guy showed up and taunted saying “I thought you don’t like the Sino? Why are you drinking c-a-p-p-u SINO?” He spelled the first five letters and pronounced SINO. I was caught off-guard that I could only sit in disbelief as he proceeded with his critique on why my call was bound to fail.
If it’s unfortunate I don’t recall who he was, it’s very fortunate, on the other hand, that there are now more persons disproving what he said. I’m not the lone wolf. The emerging incredible number of people echoing my call to boycott anything and everything made in China is most unprecedented.
In my mind, Communist China is a new international bully whose ways are manipulative. It practices debt-trap diplomacy which is modern economic theory applied when they extend excessive credit to a debtor country with the intention of extracting economic or political concessions from when it becomes incapable of paying. How can Angola pay its $25 billion loan from China when Its Gross Domestic Product is only $88 billion? Or worse, we need to find out how true is the report that China strangled Sri Lanka which reportedly owes them about $67 billion as to force it to hand over its major port of Hambantota. If this information is anchored on fact, we can point to this Sri Lanka case as classic debt trap diplomacy.
The recent events convinced me that Communist China is an illegal usurper of territories. It has invaded and occupied portions of the West Philippine Sea which the International Arbitral Tribunal ruled as belonging to the Philippine Economic Zone. Chinese Coast and Chinese militia patrol the seas as if they own it. When China established aggressive military installations on some of our islets, it forcibly violated our sovereignty.
I’m sure many Filipinos are prepared to bear arms to fight this aggressor. Didn’t the late Sen Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. say our country is worth dying for? But, to our national misfortune, we don’t have a president willing to lead us in asserting our sovereign rights. When President Rodrigo Duterte declared China to be a friend as a predicate to his refusal to confront the more than 200 Chinese ships loitering in the West Philippine Sea he demonstrated disloyalty to the republic. I’m now inclined to believe President Duterte is more yellow than the Dilawans he ceaselessly chastises. It’s our national catastrophe that we cannot trust him to defend our territorial integrity against Communist China.
Since our commander-in-chief has turned his back on our interests, it behooves upon us, the Filipino nation, to rise and defend our national honor and pride in ways we can. But, given the superiority of the Chinese firepower, no matter how much blood we spill we will never be able to dent the mighty Chinese army. The best weapon available to us is our united condemnation of all products made in China. Let’s boycott all things produced by the communist Chinese. After all, there is scuttlebutt that edible Chinese products are sprinkled with dangerous chemicals. We need not validate these reports anymore. Rather, we assume them to be true enough for us to resolve never to buy such products. Then, from actual experience, we know that the quality of electronic gadgetry, machineries, and tools made in China is very poor. Buying such Chinese-made items is a total waste. When we show to the world that we have resolved to boycott all Chinese products as our peaceful act of nationalism, other countries will find ways to support us. Let’s start now.