Three years after the Covid-19 pandemic began in China, there is a rising concern that the recent surge in cases across the world’s most populous country will trigger a new wave of infections globally. Italy, France, Spain, and Israel have tightened rules on testing of visitors from China, whose borders are set to fully reopen on January 8, 2023.
Despite the surge, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is proceeding with his four-day state visit to Beijing starting today. The Department of Foreign Affairs said “a bubble arrangement has been agreed for the Philippine delegation to minimize the risk of exposure to the virus.” This is Marcos’ first state visit outside the ASEAN region after going to Indonesia and Singapore last September, while his trips to the US, Cambodia, Thailand, and Belgium were considered official or working visits.
This time in Beijing, a contingent of businessmen from the Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Inc. (FFCCCII) will be joining Marcos, who is slated to sign at least 10 bilateral agreements with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In a press conference last week, FFCCCII announced that “this visit is expected to reap economic benefits for the Philippines, especially as China has become the country’s close economic and trade partner in the past years.”
During similar trips of former President Rodrigo Duterte to China, he received multibillion-dollar investment pledges from state-owned firms and private companies. But according to the South China Morning Post, most of these promised official development assistance and foreign direct investments failed to materialize due to various reasons “from the slow process of getting projects approved in the Philippines to increasing caution by Chinese investors.”
Several administration senators have urged Marcos to bring up the latest Senate resolution denouncing what they called the continuous harassment and intimidation tactics by Chinese armed forces in the West Philippine Sea. Introduced by Senator Francis Tolentino, the resolution was approved on December 14, 2022 by the upper chamber with all its members as co-authors, including Senate President Miguel Zubiri.
Marcos previously stated in Brussels that the European Union (EU) has committed to partner with ASEAN in enforcing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), particularly in settling maritime disputes. “The EU’s doctrine of behaviors in the South China Sea is already a very big step for claimant nations in the disputed waterways,” he remarked during the ASEAN-EU commemorative summit.
In another development, a group of Filipino seafarers petitioned the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to look into the operations of Chinese dredging vessels for big reclamation projects in Manila Bay. The Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Marinong Pilipino (SNMP) asked DMW Secretary Susan Ople and DOLE Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma to investigate why the foreign dredgers are not hiring Filipinos to man their vessels working on these projects.
The SNMP’s position is that having these vessels fully manned by foreigners constitutes a “heinous disregard and disrespect to the Filipino seafaring profession.” Chinese vessels and their crews are not permitted to do business in Philippine domestic waters – unless the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) has given them a special permit.
According to MARINA regional director Marc Anthony Pascua, the agency has issued the required permits to China Harbour Engineering Corp.’s vessels in the Pasay Reclamation Project temporarily under Philippine flag arrangement or a bareboat charter (BBC). However, he noted that employing Chinese crew in such a project is not allowed under the BBC arrangement.
Meanwhile, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) has an ongoing probe on alleged illegal activities in Manila Bay being conducted by China First Engineering Co., a sister company of China Harbour and the main contractor for the Waterfront Reclamation Project.
Both firms are under the China Communication Construction Corp., a company whose subsidiaries have dredging vessels that were blacklisted by the US government in 2020 for allegedly participating in the building of disputed artificial islands in the South China Sea. For its part, SNMP has requested the PCG, Marina, and DOLE to inspect 16 dredging vessels being used by China Harbour in Manila Bay.
It may be recalled that the Department of National Defense has expressed great concern over the presence of Chinese vessels in parts of the West Philippine Sea – maintaining that any violation of the country’s sovereign rights is unacceptable. Such issues will further test Philippine-Chinese relations against a backdrop of geopolitical developments in Asia Pacific. Hopefully they can be resolved in the aftermath of the current state visit to usher in a new era of peace in the region.