Throughout the world politics, many leaders have their own characteristics and charms. Some of them are calm, some are charming, some look a little old, and some are scary young. They must lead the country and society to develop and progress according to national conditions. It is also necessary to choose the most suitable development path according to the international environment.
If the word "arrogance" is mentioned, our first reaction will be Putin. "Emperor Putin" has worked as a special agent and can do karate. His muscles show a tough character, which is almost the perfect incarnation of arrogance.
But at the same time, there is another national leader who can be said that he is the President of the Philippines Duterte , and it is his "arrogant operation" that has brought China-Philippines relations back from the freezing point to the right track and brought the national fortune of the Philippines back to the right track. Pulled from the bottom of the sea to the surface, the future of this country has seen the light again.
The Origin of Modern China-Philippines Relations: Helpless Mistakes Stand in Line
After World War II, a big reshuffle took place on the poker table all over the world, and Southeast Asia was no exception. Historically, the Philippines was originally occupied by Spanish colonists. Later, when Spain was defeated in the Spanish-American War, it placed this orchard under the jurisdiction of the United States.
In 1935, the Philippines established a self-governing state, but because of the long-term enjoyment of the colonial dividend of the United States, there are a large number of pro-American officials in the Philippine system, and some people even hope that the Philippines will become a state of the United States.
This kind of appeal has never stopped, and it will affect the foreign policy of the Philippines in the future.
During the period from 1942 to 1945, the Philippines was occupied by Japan. During this period, Japan supported and established the puppet regime of the Second Republic of the Philippines, and vigorously suppressed the resistance forces, suppressing the aborigines by law and force as "human beings."
During the Japanese rule, 1.11 million Filipinos were killed or slaughtered, and the loss of wealth (including the equivalent value of the dead population) totaled 16 billion pesos, or about 8 billion US dollars.
After Japan surrendered, the United States took over the Philippines again. According to the original plan, the Philippines completed its independence in 1946 and became a new regime, with the Liberal Party and the Kuomintang taking turns in power.
After the establishment of the new regime in the Philippines, the Philippines chose to establish diplomatic relations with Chiang Kai-shek's puppet government because of its pro-American stance, and to hostile and isolate the new People's Republic of China.
This short-sighted decision to stand in line also directly led the Beijing authorities to refuse to recognize the Manila government and to call the regime established by the Communist Party of the Philippines the People's Government.
The short honeymoon period from confrontation to cooperation
In the 1960s, my country strengthened its support for the communist regimes in the world, especially in the surrounding areas, and provided them with a large amount of weapons, economic, technical and food assistance, thus and Manila in the Philippines. The government is even more hostile.
Until the end of the 1960s, Nixon issued the "Guam Doctrine" policy, advocated that Asian countries lead their own military defense and security, and the Philippine foreign policy gradually entered the "period of independence".
Subsequently, Nixon visited China in 1972, which officially sent a signal to the pro-American camp including the Philippines: now we are "friends", On June 9, 1975, China and the Philippines signed the "China-Philippines Joint Communiqué" , formally concluded diplomatic relations.
The Philippines recognizes the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate political power, and the establishment of political mutual trust will inevitably bring about economic benefits. On the same day, the two sides also signed the "Government Trade Agreement".
In April of the following year, the two sides deepened their cooperation and established the "China-Philippines Joint Trade Committee".
In the following 20 or 30 years, the relationship between the two sides has gradually warmed up. Not only has a lot of progress been made in political, technological and cultural exchanges, but also great achievements have been made in import and export trade.
According to WTO data, in 1974, the total bilateral trade between China and the Philippines was only US$37 million, and the following year, the figure rose to US$72 million.
By 1977, the total trade volume between China and the Philippines exceeded the 100 million US dollar mark and reached 186 million US dollars, a growth rate of 99.66%.
According to the more scientific trade combination degree (TCD) calculation, in 1974, the trade combination degree between China and the Philippines was only 0.83, and the trade combination degree between the Philippines and China was only 0.54. In 1977, the trade combination between the Philippines and China was a record. The degree of trade integration between China and the Philippines reached a record high of 5.61, while the degree of trade integration between China and the Philippines also reached 3.98.
It can be said that apart from the 40.32% drop in trade volume caused by the domestic political turmoil in the Philippines in 1986, China and the Philippines have maintained a steady growth in trade.
Falling back to the freezing point: shifting the road of contradiction
Modern countries (perhaps since ancient times) have adopted this trick: when some major and irreconcilable contradictions occur in the country, they will look for trouble abroad and give the country a consistent reason or excuse for the outside world , makes the people gradually transfer their dissatisfaction and anger outward, and then achieve the purpose of eliminating internal contradictions.
This is what the Philippines did in the 1990s. During this period, the Philippines experienced economic setbacks and the financial turmoil that engulfed the Asia-Pacific region. Unemployment and inflation in the country continued to rise.
It was also during this period that the Philippines successively introduced the "Taiwan Relations Act" and the "Philippine-Taiwan Reciprocal Relations Act", which seriously damaged the diplomatic relations between China and the Philippines, as well as the hard-won political mutual trust between the two sides.After
9·11, the Philippines and the United States seemed to have forgotten the "Guam Doctrine" in history and began to carry out further cooperation in security and defense.
After the Obama administration came to power in 2009, the Philippines continued to put pressure on China through the momentum of the new US Asia-Pacific strategy, which brought the two sides to the freezing point of diplomatic relations: the Huangyan Island incident.
The Philippine side said on April 11, 2012 that a Philippine warship confronted two Chinese patrol boats in the waters off Huangyan Island. According to media reports, the reason for the confrontation between the two sides was that the Philippine side tried to arrest two Chinese fishermen, while the Chinese side sent patrol boats Haijian 75 and Haijian 84.
To prevent the Philippines from trying to capture our fishermen, The confrontation between the two sides made the atmosphere between the two teams of ships, the two governments, and the two countries suddenly tense.
The Philippines clearly has or hopes to have the support of a country because its Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement that the waters belong to the Philippines' exclusive economic zone and continental shelf, and that its navy is responsible for law enforcement activities in the waters. refuted.
Subsequently, the Philippines disregarded China's warning and dispatched another coast guard vessel. The confrontation between China and the Philippines continued. Even though the situation is so tense, we have always maintained a low profile and restraint, and did not want the situation to escalate into a serious conflict. incident.
As a result, the resolution of this incident was also quite dramatic: the US always maintained an ambiguous attitude during the incident, obviously not wanting to go into troubled waters, but secretly hoping that China would not come to Taiwan, so the US informed the Philippine side : Under our coordination, China has agreed to negotiate with you.
In fact, China has always hoped to solve the problem through negotiation, and it has always been the case. The United States just passed on a nonsense, but this nonsense was interpreted as another meaning when it reached the Philippines.
On June 4th, the Philippines unilaterally withdrew the ships from Huangyan Island, leaving the Chinese maritime surveillance ship looking at the calm and empty sea and the sudden victory still a little overwhelmed...
Three years later, out of a kind of "scramble" With the mentality of being unable to explain to the public”, the Philippines also contributed money and efforts to organize the so-called “South China Sea Arbitration Tribunal”, which made a judgment against China’s national sovereignty, but in the final analysis, the Philippines has already exhausted its skills, and in the end it was a bamboo basket fight. Water is empty.
The "transporter" of the Philippine National Movement: Duterte
In 2016, Duterte, then the mayor of Davao, Philippines, took over the presidency through three rounds of American-style debates with his tough political style. .
Previously, Duterte's well-known executive move was to organize assassination squads, and to deal with the drug problem raging in the Philippines, he used an extremely tough but very effective means of repression: extrajudicial executions.
After Duterte took office, he insisted on anti-crime, anti-drug, and anti-corruption. The number of executions during his tenure reached more than 7,000. Even if this caused international controversy, the perpetrators were in danger for a while, and the crime rate Sharply reduced for it.
Duterte, who has such arrogant characteristics, the first thing after taking office is to rebalance the "independent foreign policy", get rid of one-sided dependence on the United States, and repair diplomatic relations with China and Russia.
He was mediated by Russia and took China as the destination of his first foreign visit among non-ASEAN countries after taking office. He visited China and announced that he would jointly develop submarine oil. Break the ice and enter into a "new spring".
Duterte's goodwill is also reflected in his support for the "Belt and Road" many times, and he has mentioned China and the Philippines as "friends" and "brothers" on many occasions.
What followed was the lifting of China's sanctions on its agricultural products, as well as a $15 billion infrastructure project cooperation and a $90 financial financing project.
In 2016, the total trade volume between China and the Philippines increased by 20%, making China the Philippines' second largest trading partner, largest source of imports and fourth largest export market. %.
Chinese tourists are also increasingly visiting the Philippines to experience the tropical island style: in 2017, the number of Chinese tourists surpassed that of South Korea, reaching 375,000, and in 2018, it reached 1.25 million, an increase of 29.62%.
In terms of investment, during Duterte's 2016 visit to China, his accompanying business delegation signed an investment agreement of more than US$8 billion with Chinese companies, which is expected to create two million jobs for the Philippines.
In 2017, China donated 80 million yuan of anti-terrorist equipment and materials to the Philippines, and undertook a post-disaster reconstruction project of 1.5 billion US dollars. !
The warming of the economy has counteracted the warming of China-Africa relations. The warming of relations has made China more powerful in the United States' Asia-Pacific strategy to defend its sovereignty.
The United States will gradually abandon the use of the Philippines as a frontier base for blockade of the South China Sea, thus allowing China to break through the first island chain and gain full initiative in the long-term recovery plan.
China-Philippines economic and trade relations and China-Philippines relations influence each other and shape each other. History and facts have proved that there is no dividend to be eaten and no profit to be gained by following Big Brother America. penetration utilization.
When Duterte, the arrogant and tough ruler, saw the reality clearly, he turned to China, a truly worthy friend.
It is true that it does not mean that the situation is good now that China and the Philippines can maintain good relations forever. In fact, the long-term development and long-term cooperation between China and the Philippines are still facing great resistance.
After all, the US forces have been operating in the Philippines for nearly a hundred years and have invested a lot of resources and manpower, which will form a deep-rooted resistance to development and hinder the progress of the Philippines.
But over time, we believe that the government and people of the Philippines will eventually see which team is the right team.
After all, American foreign policy is: You all have to listen to me, in the order I set. And our foreign policy is relatively simple: don't mess around, let's make a fortune together.
