I have mentioned Chinese aggression and shenanigans against the Philippines in past posts (building artificial islands, attacking Philippine fishermen and more recentl Coast Guard ships, even within the 200 mile economic zone, the Chinese casinos with many military age men working there, the Chinese mayor who pretended she was Filipino, and all those Chinese students who instead of studying at major universities just happen to be studying in a minor college in the north of Luzon, near to military bases that are protecting the strait between the Philippines and Taiwan).
StrategyPage has a summary of their spying here.
May 24, 2025: In January Filipino security forces arrested about a dozen Chinese and Filipino citizens and charged them all with spying for China. Some of the accused had been caught while using drones, cameras and other electronic instruments to survey Filipino infrastructure and military installations. The alleged Chinese spies were particularly eager to study bases and areas that American forces would use when they regularly visited to train with their Filipino counterparts.
Read the whole thing for more details.
One problem is that there are thousands of Filipinos working in China; Most of them are in Macao or in Hong Kong, not the mainland, and most (including some of our relatives/friends) are caregivers, nurses, teachers, etc. So these people are open to being arrested or used for human hostages if war happens against Taiwan
Please also note what this article says about Chinese spies, and all the Chinese gangsters, many smuggling or in the drug trade:
The Chinese gangs conceal their illegal operations among the legitimate ones. The Philippines has long had a major corruption problem and the Chinese took advantage of that to pay off the right people in areas where they operated. Since none of the victims were Filipino, the Chinese operations were seen has beneficial to the Philippines and Filipinos. It required federal Filipino intervention.
These actions have been more frequent as allies of the Philippines complain that Chinese espionage operations are regularly traced back to the Philippines.
There have been several crackdowns, but the Chinese gangs were prepared for this and sacrificed some portions of their operations while the majority went silent and unseen.. The Chinese government assists the gangs as long as the gangsters provide support for Chinese espionage efforts. This is a problem that has defied numerous efforts to eliminate it. Now you know why...
I wonder if one of the reasons that the internationalist elites and CIA hated Duterte was because he was going after the drug gangs,
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And this essay discusses the Chinese Coast Guard.
Coast guard ships are not usually heavily armed but the Chinese ships are increasingly being seen equipped with water cannons, extra searchlights and equipment for grappling with other ships. These tools are used to interfere with foreign fishing ships and transports that go to parts of the South China Sea that China has declared Chinese territory, even though other nations have a stronger legal claim.
Using water cannons, bright searchlights to blind the crews of other ships and aggressive maneuvering to include grappling with smaller foreign ships and forcibly moving them the foreign ships are persuaded to back off.
The Chinese coast guard vessels also use these tactics against foreign warships and if the foreigners shoot back the Chinese can declare themselves the victims of an unprovoked attack and call in more fire power.
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in other words, they are practicing on how to block shipping through the area, which is a vital shipping route from the Indian Ocean to East Asian countries.
and of course control of this sea lane can let them block supplies going to Taiwan.
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in other news, China vs the Catholic church is heating up again.
China used bribes to crooked Cardinals in the Vatican to let them take over the underground Catholic church there.
But the agreement is up for renewal, and everyone is hoping that the new pope will refuse to extend the agreement, especially since of course China has been breaking the agreement.
From AlJazeerah:
Pope Leo will have to decide whether to continue renewing the accord. There have been some apparent violations on the Beijing side, with some unilateral appointments that occurred without papal consent.
The issue came to a head just before the conclave that elected Leo, when the Chinese church proceeded with the preliminary election of two bishops, a step that comes before official consecration.
...Relations had long been fraught over China’s insistence on its exclusive right to name bishops as a matter of national sovereignty, while the Vatican insisted on the pope’s exclusive right to name the successors of the original Apostles.
the argument about secular authorities appointing bishops essentially is about if the state controls the church, or is the church separate from the state. This argument goes back to the early church, and came to a head in the early middle ages: Wikipedia article
why is this important? Well, if you remember back to the days of the fall of communism, many of these revolutions were led by or inspired by the churches. Here in the Philippines, the People Power/EDSA revolution against Marcos I was led by our Cardinal.
So the church as an independent institution is dangerous to tyrants.
So maybe Pope Leo is sending a signal that he won't bot to tyrants?
Thomas a Becket and Thomas More call your office. The church vs state fights are back....
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