President Duterte has backed off on his “China is our friend and too powerful to fight” attitude after he found that he was losing vital political and popular support because of perceived over-dependence on Chinese benevolence. Also, a new government in the United States provided more support for resistance to Chinese aggression...
Chinese efforts to appease angry Filipinos with massive investments and other economic perks are not working.
Japan has taken advantage of this and formed a growing alliance to oppose China. Japan has been establishing links with Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and other countries threatened by Chinese aggression. ...
While memories of Japanese brutality throughout East Asia during World War II still survive the fear of similar treatment from China are turning Japan into a sought-after ally for most nations in the region..and not in the story: What about Koreans? Lots of Koreans study here, and set up businesses, and lots of OFW go there for jobs.
backstory on those artificial islands that China has made by destroying the ecology of our fishing areas.
China tried to bribe a previous politician to grab the Spratlys via the ZTE deal, and got caught. But they tried again when honest but weak PNoy took over, and Obama stopped the Philippines from fighting them, saying take it to court. We won, and have a meaningless paper to prove it. Duh.
but the Chinese have long had a lock on businesses in SEAsia (which is the background behind the pogroms against them in both Indonesia and Vietnam).
so like the Jews in Europe, they are resented and often made a scapegoat, since often they are clannish and separate from the local populations.
However, in the Philippines, non citizens could not own land, so the Chinese businessmen married Filipinas from elite families, and the oligarchy that runs our economy here are often their descendents. How can you tell? If they have round faces and light complexions, they have Chinese ancestry. If they have long faces and brown complexions, they are locals. Third group: the Spanish mestizos, like our family.
because of intermarriage, the good news is that they will back the Philippines. But because of the Asian idea that you do business with your relatives and friends, it means there is a barrier to outsiders.
This means ordinary folks can't start businesses, and they know corruption goes beyond "gifts" and kickbacks, but depends on who you know/went to an elite school with/are related to or have married into their clan.
Hence, the huge number of middle class Filipinos who migrate overseas for economic reasons.
so we are part of this "second tier" of the economy, who often had to go overseas for economic reasons (we have relatives in Germany, Canada, Italy, Australia, the UK, and of course the USA, while others worked temporary jobs in the MiddleEast, Korea, Macau and Malaysia... and then we have many who work on ships:)
Yes, our family owns a local business, i.e. organic food, which is partly helped by government grants to train our subcontracting farmers and to promote our products in overseas trade fairs, but the dirty little secret is that this business is essentially subsidized by my late husband's savings and our pensions).
Rappler expose on Organic food. (lots of cheating of course: which is another reason why we don't make a profit: We are honest about being organic)
In Francis Fukuyama's book Trust, he explains how trust is the lynch pin behind sucess in business, and notes that the lines of trust in China tend to be family/friend ties; in contrast, the ties of trust in America (and Japan) tend to be via voluntary associations: e.g. the local Rotary club, the local churches.
which is why I tend to write a bit about religion: not just as a pious Catholic who actually believes this stuff, but from a societal point of view.
A lot of analysis in Western papers tend to ignore religion, but it is the elephant in the room, both behind terrorism/drugs and behind economic success (which is why I am so critical of the Pope, who instead of preaching NO BRIBES is preaching the green internationalist stuff).
One dirty little secret behind the Philippines is that the "family" ethic (which includes accepting gifts
But society is changing: The middle class here is becoming Protestant, while the Francis bishops are continuing their liberation theology ideas and green ideas of the NWO. They want to take care of the poor (which of course is good) but seem clueless about how to encourage jobs and investments to hire the poor and lift them into the middle class.
we see this cluelessness with the influence of the church pushing the gov't to promote "green" ideas and organic food while ignoring the elephant in the room: Corruption.
Hence we see gov't throwing money into organic food, at a time when we have to import food to feed our city poor and should be pushing GM food and fertilizer to increase productivity so we don't have to import so much rice.
Importing rice, of course, lets the crooked businessmen get rich (and the politicians who look the other way at rice smuggling get their share of the loot).
Ah, but such initiatives encourage traditional farmers to stay on their land and live a traditional lifestyle, which is good.
Except the reality is: this lasts for one generation. The local farmers are now able to educate their kids, but the dirty little secret is that a lot of the kids are leaving, because their kids prefer to work in Manila or overseas... so their parents are selling their land to others, often "Balikbayan" i.e. returning from overseas work... and the local farmers are being replaced with essentially tenant farmers from other provinces.
and no: I am not complaining: We need organic food which is popular among our growing middle class, and probably healthier to boot. And in the future, since our wage level is higher than other nearby rice growing countries, it means that maybe we can make a better profit for our farmers by exporting organic gourmet rice to Europe and the Middle East.
Well, it keeps our business going, and helps farmers who want to stay on their ancestral land and farm.
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