China fueling a political explosion in the Philippines

AllAfrica

14-02-2025

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Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr on a previous campaign trail. Photo: Facebook
MANILA – The Philippines kicked off its midterm election cycle in turmoil, with the Ferdinand Marcos Jr administration engaged in a two-front assault targeting his former ally-turned-enemy the Dutertes on one hand and their perceived backers in Beijing on the other.
Setting the stage for a raucous campaign, nearly two-thirds of the Philippine House of Representatives, which is broadly aligned to the president, overwhelmingly voted to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte on the grounds of alleged corruption and abuse of power, not least a not-so-veiled threat to assassinate Marcos Jr.
Days later, Marcos Jr took up the cudgels against the Dutertes with unusually combative rhetoric. During a recent campaign sortie in his home province of Ilocos Norte, where he accompanied the administration's senatorial and key local government bets, Marcos Jr unleashed a broadside attack against his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte and his clan's aligned candidates.
'None of [my preferred candidates] are accomplices in pocketing sacks of money, exploiting the pandemic crisis and letting our countrymen get sick and die,' he declared, referring to the Duterte administration's alleged abysmal handling of and numerous corruption scandals during the Covid-19 pandemic.
'None of them acts like the acolyte of a false prophet who is languishing due to his defiling of our youth and women. None of them defends the hotbeds of crime and sexual harassment against women—the POGOS [Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators],' he added, referring to Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, an erstwhile Duterte ally detained on charges of sex and human trafficking, as well as the proliferation of dodgy online Chinese casinos during the previous Rodrigo Duterte administration.
The Filipino president has also upped the ante by effectively accusing his Duterte-aligned rivals of being Chinese puppets while emphasizing his comparatively uncompromising stance on the South China Sea disputes.
'None of them claps for China and is even happy whenever we are being water cannoned, our Coast Guard rammed, fishermen blocked, their catches stolen and our islands retaken as their own territory,' he declared, referring to the Duterte era's soft-pedaling on China's aggressive actions in the disputed waters.
Marcos Jr's tough rhetoric has coincided with a systematic crackdown on alleged Chinese influence operations in the Philippines. Over the past month, the Philippine intelligence and security authorities have apprehended various Chinese nationals allegedly involved in espionage activities while the Philippine legislature has conducted hearings subpoenaing suspected pro-China propagandists.
Public pressure has also been building on Beijing-friendly candidates such as Ronald Dela Rosa, former President Duterte's police chief, who has suddenly and expediently adopted a tougher stance on the South China Sea disputes.
Since rising to elected power, Marcos Jr has steadily adopted a firmer stand on China while doubling down on enhanced defense relations with Western partners, including mutual defense treaty ally the US.
He has also rolled back other key Duterte policy legacies such as the bloody 'drug war', which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of suspected drug dealers in extrajudicial killings.
In response, the ex-president broke with tradition and, since last year, has effectively called for the resignation of his successor in favor of his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte. In his latest outburst, Duterte again accused Marcos Jr of being a 'heroin addict' without providing evidence.
With his daughter now facing potential impeachment in the Senate, the upper chamber tasked with conducting impeachment trials, the former president also openly quipped about 'killing' more than a dozen senators to pave the way for his favored candidates.
Latest surveys consistently show that pro-Duterte candidates are lagging against Marco Jr's preferred bets, who have dominated the so-called 'magic 12' circle of potential winnables.
Although the Dutertes remain popular on their home island of Mindanao and still enjoy the support of major religious groups, they've met their match in the Marcos Jr administration's well-oiled machinery. And they stand to lose at the polls amid accusations of acting as Beijing's proxies amid growing anti-China sentiment in the Philippines.
Earlier this year, the Marcos Jr administration announced that it had purged the Dutertes from the National Security Council, where both the vice president and ex-presidents are usually either ex-officio or executive members. Now, pro-Duterte candidates are also feeling the China-related heat.
'I'll be frank with you. I am willing to kill myself in the [South China Sea] if they say I am pro-China. I am eager to wage war there in the West Philippine Sea,' re-electionist Senator Ronald dela Rosa, a staunch Dutetre ally, told reporters in a recent press conference.
'Pro-China? I challenge them, if they want, I will give them a gun and maybe we will attack the bullies in the West Philippine Sea,' he added, somewhat obscurely.
What was once seen as an invincible tandem between the Philippines' two most powerful political dynasties has steadily turned into a heated war of words. Encouraged by Washington and other key allies, the Marcos Jr administration has stepped up efforts to curb Chinese influence that penetrated the country during Duterte.
Last month, Philippine authorities announced the arrest of five Chinese nationals accused of espionage. According to the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the five suspects were caught taking alleged sensitive video footage through drones and military-grade cameras disguised as civilian security closed-circuit TVs (CCTVs).
Days earlier, a Chinese national, along with two local accomplices, were caught in a vehicle carrying surveillance equipment while roaming sensitive military facilities. Philippine security agencies claim that the alleged spies were providing real-time data on strategic locations, including images of Philippine air and naval bases.
They were also accused of recording the movements of Philippine warships engaged in resupply missions in contested South China Sea features.
Top Philippine security officials have suggested the recent arrests are only the 'tip of the iceberg' of coming suppression operations, reflecting Manila's concerns about the infiltration of Chinese agents and their related assets in recent years.
'When you say gray zone, most people only think of Chinese activities out at sea, but information and psychological warfare have also become part and parcel of their malign influence,' National Security Council assistant director General Jonathan Malaya told The Japan Times in a recent interview.
The Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department, meanwhile, has allegedly been actively weaponizing its influence among sympathetic groups, including Chinese-Filipino business groups that are dependent on imports from and access to Chinese markets.
'They are very active here in the Philippines and have significantly ramped up their actions since February 2023 when the Philippine government implemented a policy to expose and shed light into what's happening in the West Philippine Sea,' Malaya added, referring to the Philippines' 'Transparency Initiative' focused on exposing China's aggression in disputed waters.
A major area of concern for a liberal democracy like the Philippines, meanwhile, is the proliferation of Beijing-backed troll farms and propagandists who have been actively spreading pro-China narratives that often discredit the incumbent government.
A recent AidData study showed that as many as 10,000 fake accounts were run by China-based elements. According to the findings, Beijing has been engaged in a two-pronged approach that seeks to sow political divisions in the Philippines while undermining a unified national response to the South China Sea disputes.
'China is not engaging in all these media cooperation and development finance [projects] in a vacuum. It's happening alongside very visible disputes in the South China Sea,' Samantha Custer, director at AidData, told reporters following the release of their 51-page study in September.
'Less direct is the proliferation of online troll farms and other fake accounts that [Beijing] can use to spread mis- or disinformation to foreign publics, along with partnerships with social media influencers,' the study argued.
In response, Philippine authorities are now pushing for revisions of the country's archaic espionage and treason laws to cope with emerging threats and the increasingly hybrid nature of warfare in the 21st century.
The Philippines is also doubling down on intelligence-sharing with key allies, especially the US and Japan, to crack down on Chinese malign influence operations. For the first time in Philippine history, high-stakes elections have coincided with intensified proxy wars among superpowers backing rival political dynasties.
Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on X at @RichHeydarian