Frienemy moment

Three years of investing in goodwill, and it didn’t pay off. That, in a nutshell, was what happened when President Duterte, deciding that the time had come, finally raised the arbitral ruling on the South China Sea with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

As announced by China’s ambassador, Beijing didn’t budge on its refusal to abide by the ruling.

Worse, Xi reportedly wants his friend Duterte to stop yapping about it, and to never raise it again if ever the Philippine leader again pays homage to China’s ruler for life.

Soon, Xi will even have a bonus: after over a decade of hemming and hawing, Beijing is ready for a Code of Conduct that will maintain the status quo in the South China Sea. This could effectively legitimize Beijing’s construction and militarization of all the artificial islands that it has built since the first one on Panganiban (Mischief) Reef off Palawan.

We cannot meekly accede to it. Talking and playing nice aren’t working. If we want to assert our sovereign rights, we have to keep foreigners from violating them.

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There’s a suggestion to take the arbitral ruling to the United Nations, where the Philippines can expect support from the international community for a rules-based global order.

But we all know this isn’t going to happen under Duterte, who hates the UN, the European Union and its members especially Iceland and France for criticizing his human rights record and interfering in his flagship program, the war against illegal drugs.

China may ignore any UN statement that smacks of censure of its stance on the arbitral ruling. But when its economy is threatened, Beijing is sensitive to potential foreign sanctions when it is deemed to flout international rules. It has made a significant effort, for example, to abide by global rules on fair trade and intellectual property.

Surely it cannot ignore forever a ruling based on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which it has ratified.

The US has long called for compliance with the arbitral ruling. Significantly, other countries including Britain, France and Germany have issued similar calls.

For reasons I have mentioned, however, our government isn’t enamored with these G-7 countries.

We may just have to wait for 2022 before we can muster international support for our case. By that time, unfortunately, the current government might have already signed away our sovereign rights and maritime patrimony to China.

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Because Duterte had declared publicly that the time had come to raise the issue, the Chinese were ready for him: nothing had changed, he was told. Beijing did not recognize the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which awarded the Philippines sovereign rights over Panganiban Reef, Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal and Recto (Reed) Bank and declared Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal as a common fishing ground.

Considering that the arbitral ruling also invalidated Beijing’s greedy nine-dash-line claim over nearly the entire South China Sea, no one really expected Xi to have an epiphany of good neighborliness, just because the ruling was raised by his “friend” from the Philippines.

Could there be some underlying goodwill amid the public declarations of hardline positions on the maritime dispute?

Duterte’s spokesman Salvador Panelo said China committed to stop its warships’ intrusions into Philippine territorial waters.

Let’s hope Panelo didn’t get this assurance simply from his textmate the Chinese ambassador. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana had told us on One News’ “The Chiefs” that he had complained to the ambassador about the warships shortly after the first intrusions were reported in Tawi-Tawi in February. The envoy reportedly said the intrusions were “wrong” and would not be repeated, but the intrusions continued until this August.

Another promise by Beijing, according to Panelo, is that there will be no repeat of a Chinese vessel hitting and sinking a Filipino fishing boat. It’s not clear if the Chinese also promised to stay away from Recto Bank, where the sinking occurred last June, with the Chinese abandoning the 22 Filipino fishermen in the water.

Recto Bank is not a common fishing ground like Panatag. It is within our 200-mile exclusive economic zone or EEZ.

This is the consequence of our failure to protect our sovereign rights. If a Philippine vessel did the same to a Chinese fishing boat within the 200-mile EEZ of the Chinese mainland, the Philippine boat will be blasted out of the water by Chinese security forces.

President Duterte looked less than enthusiastic in his photos with Xi. Maybe Duterte was just tired, and we’re reading too much into his body language. But surely even he doesn’t completely buy his spokesman’s spin on Xi’s rebuff – that the arbitral ruling does not define bilateral relations.

It may not be the defining factor, but it weighs heavily on bilateral relations.

And every Chinese action that ignores the ruling – such as the warship intrusions – is a slap on the face of the Philippines. As Lorenzana put it: “Nakakalalaki na.”

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What does that “frienemy” moment in Beijing between the two presidents mean for bilateral relations?

The trust rating of China among Filipinos may plunge farther below zero in the next survey. Not that Beijing will mind – it has a nationalistic constituency to worry about. But perhaps Philippine officialdom, especially politicians, will be concerned.

Chinese-run enterprises in the Philippines may come under closer scrutiny. Projects signed with Chinese partners may crawl along in implementation due to the minute scrutiny and possibly even legal challenges.

On China’s part, Beijing may suddenly be offended by the tiniest spots in Philippine bananas, and stop importing them again.

Offers of billions in Chinese loans may be left untapped. With the contractors meant to be Chinese firms for Beijing-funded projects, who would lose if the Philippines turned instead to the Japanese, South Koreans and the Asian Development Bank for such funding?

Indonesia seizes vessels including Chinese-manned ships fishing illegally in its waters and blows them up. Last December, President Joko Widodo opened a military base on one of the islands in Indonesia’s Natunas where there have been Chinese intrusions.

“If you want us to fight, yes, together we will do it,” Widodo said at the inauguration of the base.

We have the ruling of a UN-backed arbitral tribunal, based on a UN convention. We are well within our right to enforce the ruling in our officially designated economic zone.

If foreign intruders won’t stay out of our economic zone and territorial waters, we have to make them.

That’s what any self-respecting state must do.