Philippine news

StrategyPage has a podcast on the recent news from the Philippines that pretty well summarizes what is going on:





They note China's economic push that includes bringing their own workers, and then using "strategic debt" so that when it can't be paid back they can grab the country's resources.

There is a lot of resentment against China for these things: as I noted in a previous post, they have 100 thousand immigrants here to do jobs Filipinos can do.

and SP notes what is true: Locals resent this.

Heck, locals hate the Chinese for their manipulation of the economy. Many of the oligarchy families that run the place have Chinese ancestors and bribes would help them to look the other way, but the locals resent the Chinese lock on the economy because it makes it hard for locals to succeed in business.

In other words, if you work hard, you still remain poor, which means too many of our best and brightest migrate elsewhere to support their families, either as permanent immigrants or as temporary workers in the Middle East or in East Asian countries.

Too many here know that in the Chinese language press the Chinese claim Luzon is one of their lost provinces... and locals are aware of this, even if the western MSM ignores it. And locals resent the Chinese illegal grab of our maritime resources: we won in court but Obama just shrugged and wouldn't help then president PNoy stop them.

 Duterte is buddy buddy with China is one of the reasons Duterte might be in trouble in this election.

on the other hand, his anti drug push remains popular,

and here, local elections is usually about which clan/ family member will be elected in the local election.