A choice between the US and China?

May 3, 2024

MANILA – Two of the world’s superpowers are zealously competing for our affection. There’s China which woes us with promises of peaceful coexistence if we join them in the negotiating table to resolve our conflict in the West Philippine Sea (WPS). There’s the United States which promises to come to our defense if China attacks us militarily. Between the two, whom should we believe? But first, what are at stake for us? If China will have its way, we will lose 500,000 square kilometers of sea territory, which is our western coast’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and which we have named as the WPS. The area is far bigger than the 300,000 sq km combined land area of all our 7,641 islands. We stand to lose our exclusive rights to fish and exploit all marine resources in the area. In fact, an advocacy group estimated in 2021 that as much as 240,000 kilos, or more than 260 tons, are illegally taken daily by Chinese fishing vessels from our EEZ. If we multiply that by 365 days, that’s 94,900 tons of fish that we lose in a year. Juxtapose that with recent reports that we will need to import 25,000 metric tons of fish for the last three months of this year. How much of the imported fish will come from the fish poached by China from our waters? We also stand to lose our exclusive rights to mine 6,203 million barrels of oil and 12.158 billion cubic feet of gas contained in our EEZ, per our government’s estimates.

We had been talking to China for so many years in our earnest attempt to peacefully settle our competing claims. But time and again, China has proven untrustworthy. While its mouth talks of peace, its hands and feet engage in unpeaceful acts. It has perpetrated acts of aggression by building artificial islands