Sacrificing not just for him but also for the motherland

Smuggling and unauthorized COVID-19 vaccinating was wrong. Still Rody Duterte and aides commend the presidential guards for it. In their view, the soldiers braved likely adverse effects to protect fully the highest official – a heroic sacrifice.

The nobler sacrifice by our fighting men is for the motherland. Our seas are being invaded. As our people cry out, the aggression heightens. Our troops must train and equip to defend our sovereignty.

Everyone knows who the aggressor is. China is taking advantage of our distraction by the pandemic that spread from Wuhan. While we struggle with deadly infections and economic slump, Beijing tightens its hold on reefs stolen from us. That is the way of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Mao Tse-tung Thought draws from Sun Tzu: “When the enemy rests, attack; when the enemy retreats, pursue.”

Last Christmas day China landed its biggest warplane on Kagitingan (Fiery Cross) Reef. Satellite monitors were inconclusive on what the Y-20 transported. But the South China Morning Post quoted experts as saying the airlifter can carry armored vehicles and missile launchers.

Clearly Beijing continues to militarize the West Philippine Sea, said international maritime lawyer Jay Batongbacal, PhD. In 2015 Chinese president and CCP secretary general Xi Jinping had vowed to not warmonger in the region. The following year the People’s Liberation Army landed fighters and troop transports on Kagitingan. Xi also chairs the CCP Central Military Commission, to which the PLA reports.

Days after the Y-20 mission, the PLA Southern Theater Command began three simultaneous practices in Hainan waters 648 nm away.  The show of force ended last Monday. In a recent visit to the PLA unit, Xi told the generals to “polish their commanding.” Since 2018 the Command has been offering exchanges and exercises with the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Its “friendliness” is part of propaganda and united-front work of CCP commissars in the PLA.

Kagitingan is outside China’s 200-nm exclusive economic zone. The Hague arbitral court outlawed in 2016 Beijing’s spurious “nine-dash line” claim over EEZs of the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia.

The reef is within the Philippines’ extended continental shelf. China grabbed it in 1988 along with five others in the Philippine EEZ: Zamora (Subi), Calderon (Cuarteron), McKennan (Hughes), Burgos (Gaven) and Mabini (Johnson South). Beijing concreted them into island-fortresses starting 2014. Panganiban (Mischief) Reef was taken and fortified in 1995. Missile pads and signal-jammers have been installed in Kagitingan, Zamora and Panganiban reefs.

Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal was occupied in 2012. Chinese gunboats machine-gun and water cannon Filipino boats that venture to our traditional fishing grounds. Chinese coastguards protect Hainanese maritime militia that poach fish, sea turtles, giant clams and fan corals. Beijing has announced to soon build air and naval bases, and thereafter enforce an air defense identification zone. Philippine ships and aircraft passing through the WPS will be required to seek PLA permission.

From the island-outposts, the PLA-Navy harasses sealifts to Filipino marines in Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal and civilians in Pagasa Island. Chinese buoys regularly are dropped off at Sabina Shoal near Palawan preparatory to takeover. Chinese exploration vessels are escorted to oil- and gas-rich Recto (Reed) Bank. In April a Chinese destroyer aimed weapons at a Philippine patrol near Malampaya gas field. Months before a Chinese armada trespassed and provocatively zigzagged in Sibutu Strait, Tawi-Tawi.

All this is happening in the midst of ASEAN, China talks for a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. Crucial in the CoC is status quo of forces. The pandemic has delayed the drafting. The CCP is using the lull to escalate PLA presence in the WPS and Vietnam’s Paracel archipelago. That way, status quo would cover Beijing’s new encroachments. The PLA continues to land bombers in the Paracels’ Woody Island.

China’s sea aggression aims not only to steal small neighbors’ marine wealth. It is also a stage-off to retake Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province. The CCP’s target is between the 70th anniversary of its rise to power in 2019 and its centenary in 2021.

PLA squadrons routinely trespass the waters off Batanes and Babuyan islands near Taiwan. Chinese companies are applying to lease Fuga island there, and Grande and Chiquita islands at the mouth of Subic Bay near Panatag. A foothold on Fuga will afford China access to Benham Rise, east of Luzon. Ostensibly to build an international airport, the state firm that reclaimed the seven Philippine reefs is striving to dislodge the Philippine Navy from Sangley Base at the entrance to Manila Bay. Another state firm, through its Filipino partner, has been allowed to put up cell sites inside AFP camps, exposing those to potential eavesdropping and cyber-sabotage.

Chinese companies and citizens are obligated to support overseas and domestic espionage, and to keep such participation secret. Even Duterte, though friendly to Beijing, can be targeted. Presumably state firm Sinopharm sized up the strengths and weaknesses of the Presidential Security Group to which, Duterte indicated, it supplied the unregistered vaccines.

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