One
In 1898, when China was practicing the "Penghu Reform Law", the Philippines became a colony of the United States.
That year, when an American warship exploded in the waters off Havana, Cuba, killing 266 people, the United States believed that Spain had done it and used this as an excuse to demand that Spain cease its military operations in Cuba and recognize Cuban independence.
The statement of the United States is nominally for the sake of Cuba, but in fact it wants to expel Spain and make itself the suzerainty of Cuba.
This kind of careful thinking hidden under justice, how can Spain not understand, are thousands of years of foxes, what do you play to talk about fasting, so Spain resolutely disagreed with the demands of the United States.
After much fruitless discussion, Spain declared war on the United States on April 24 and the United States declared war on Spain the next day.
After the outbreak of the "Spanish-American War", the United States, under the banner of "helping Cuban independence", landed at Guantanamo Bay and attacked Santiago in mid-July, and the Spanish army was defeated.
Since it was an all-out war with Spain, Spain's colony in Asia, the Philippines, was also within the scope of the United States' attack.
There was an uprising leader in the Philippines named Aguinaldo, who had previously rebelled against Spain and was forced into exile in Hong Kong.
After the outbreak of the "Spanish-American War", Dewey, commander of the US Far East Fleet, persuaded Aguinaldo to return to China and re-raise troops against Spain, and promised that the United States was not interested in the Philippines and that the support given was to protect the Filipino people.
Believing this, Aquinado returned to the Philippines to gather his men to raise the banner of righteousness, and in June 1898 issued a declaration of independence, establishing a revolutionary government in the Philippines.
Aguinaldo and other Filipino insurgents are full of illusions about the United States, thinking that holding the thighs of the United States can make the Philippines truly independent and take off.
But the reality was harsh, and the United States quickly gave Aquinado a big mouth and let him know what a weak country has no human rights.
In August, 15,000 U.S. expeditionary forces arrived in the Philippines, first promising the rebels that the Philippines would be independent, and then meeting secretly with the Spanish governor to discuss the transfer of Manila to the United States and not allowing the Philippine insurgents to enter the city.
In order to take care of Spain's face, the U.S. army pretended to attack Manila, and the Spanish army resisted slightly, so it surrendered its weapons to the U.S. army, a siege battle, and the death toll of both sides was less than 500.
When U.S. troops entered Manila, Merritt, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Expeditionary Force, immediately ordered U.S. troops to deploy in Manila and set up a military junta as the military governor of the Philippines to prohibit the Philippine insurgents from entering the city.
Aguinaldo had no choice but to obey the orders of the American army and deploy the rebel army around Manila, waiting for the judgment of fate.
The promise made a few months ago seemed like a joke.
Whether or not to colonize the Philippines is actually disputed within the United States.
A sample survey conducted by an American newspaper found that 43 percent of Americans agreed to annex the Philippines, 24.6 percent opposed it, and 32.4 percent were neutral.
Opponents believe that the Annexation of the Philippines by the United States runs counter to the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine and participates in the international environment of great power disputes, which is not good for the United States.
The agreers believe that the United States without colonies is already behind the times, and if it does not participate in imperialist adventures, whether it can keep its interests and markets is still two things, and turning the Pacific Ocean into an inner lake of the United States must become a strategic goal of the United States.
Charles Deng, a former U.S. minister to China, put it more directly:
"We have the right to take the Philippines as the occupiers, the Philippines is our foothold in the Far East, and the occupation of the Philippines can give us status and influence, and can also bring us valuable import and export trade."
There were many benefits and few disadvantages, so it didn't take long for the two factions to argue and have results.
In December 1898, the United States and Spain signed a treaty in Paris, stipulating that Spain would completely abandon Cuba and cede Puerto Rico, Guam and other colonies to the United States, but the Philippines did not give up unconditionally, but sold it to the United States for $20 million.
At this point, Spain lost its colonies in the Americas and the Pacific, and the United States took over the mantle of Spain and officially entered the world stage.
Of course, Cuba and the Philippines have resisted, but in the face of the huge power gap, the resistance ability of backward countries is infinitely close to zero, and it has been gradually pacified in a few years.
The United States began decades of colonial rule in Cuba and the Philippines.
Two
The United States colonized the Philippines initially brought "benefits" to the Philippines, such as the establishment of a civilian government in the Philippines, the right to vote and be elected by the Philippine people, and the improvement of the judicial system.
These adjustments in the political dimension have indeed made the civilization of the Philippines progress a little.
In terms of social infrastructure, the United States has also done a lot of things.
In order to repair transportation facilities, the U.S. colonial authorities stipulated that the Philippines pay a poll tax of $1 per person per year, and then used this part of the funds to build 14,000 kilometers of roads, 6,000 bridges, 1,000 kilometers of railways, and allocated $370,000 to build agricultural irrigation projects, expanding the area of arable land from 1.26 million hectares to more than 4 million hectares.
In addition, the Philippines has the support of the United States, and major cities have advanced modern equipment such as radio, broadcasting, and airports.
Even in education, the Philippines is making rapid progress, and by 1939, the literacy rate of the population over the age of ten in the Philippines has risen from 20% to 49%, and half of the population can communicate in English.
It seems that everything is thriving.
Philippine scholars comment that under U.S. governance, the Philippines' progress has been astonishing. The United States itself evaluates that the United States has built the Philippines into a "window of democracy in East Asia." ”
However, neither progress nor window windows can obscure the essence of the United States in colonizing the Philippines and plundering its resources.
Originally, during the Spanish rule, the Philippines was one of the international trade centers, and Chinese silk and porcelain, Indian textiles, Southeast Asian spices and other commodities were all centrally transshipped in the Philippines, bringing massive capital flows to the Philippines.
The Philippines itself can also export sugar, hemp, bird's nest, rice, cotton and other cash crops, although it does not make much money, but the commodity economy is at least diverse and normal.
After the United States colonized the Philippines, after several policy adjustments, by 1913, the "Underwood Simmons Act" was promulgated, allowing Filipino goods to enter the U.S. market without restriction and exempt from tariffs.
This is the free trade that the United States advertises.
But the problem is that with fully market-oriented free trade, firms and commodities in weak countries lose state protection and have little way to compete with developed countries in terms of controlling costs and market rules.
Developed countries can get low-priced raw materials, large-scale machine production to control costs, and then use advanced technology to produce high-quality and inexpensive commodities, and then backed by national strength, formulate market rules that meet their own interests, and finally achieve the effect of dumping commodities and monopolizing the market.
This is also why the European and American powers, when they were not developed, invariably formulated trade protection policies, and after the development of their own industries, they invariably demanded free trade.
Free trade is essentially a winner-take-all model, and if you want to trade freely with developed countries, you have to see if you are a winner.
People of insight in the Philippines can also see this truth, but the Philippines is a colony of the United States, and they can't change it when they see it.
As a result, driven by the demand for the United States and the profits of tariff-free exports, the diversification of goods in the Philippines is gone.
Merchants gradually reduced the production of other commodities for great profits, continuously expanded the production of sugar, hemp, and tobacco, and then exported them to the United States.
After decades of market domestication, the Philippines has degenerated from a diverse economy to a unitary economy, and its trading partners have evolved from countries such as Britain, the United States, Spain, and Japan to the primary raw material suppliers to the United States.
We speak with data.
In 1900, the United States accounted for 11% of the total value of Philippine import and export trade, which was one of many trading partners and did not matter. By 1935, this value had soared to 72 percent, arguably the Philippine economy was completely dependent on the U.S. market.
The Philippines naturally imports manufactured goods from the United States, and sugar, hemp, tobacco and coconut account for more than 90% of the exported goods.
Even in terms of individual products, sugar exported to the United States accounts for 99.9 percent of Philippine sugar exports, coconuts exported to the United States account for 66 percent of Philippine coconut exports, tobacco exports to the United States account for 46 percent of Philippine tobacco exports, and hemp exported to the United States accounts for more than half of Philippine hemp exports.
That is the power of free trade.
Open mouths of benevolence and morality, silence of democracy and freedom, and do not use violent conquest, but can completely change the economic structure of a country, so that the country is closely attached to the surroundings of the United States.
Dissatisfied? Useless.
We are free trade, all this is your Philippines itself, who can blame?
Three
The Philippines' economic structure is completely dependent on the United States, and the consequences are serious.
The first serious consequence is that the economic lifeblood of the Philippines is completely in the hands of the United States, and there is no room for maneuvering.
The only export target of the Philippines is the United States, so the merchants make money or lose money, whether the people's lives are rich or poor, all in the United States, that is, whether to continue to import Philippine goods.
Once the Philippines disobeys the United States, the United States can fully say that we will not import Philippine sugar, hemp, coconuts and tobacco next year, and you Philippines will sell it wherever it likes.
Then what awaits the Philippines is a depression and the people's hardships are lifted.
After all, the only bulk export object of the Philippines is the United States, and the bulk import object of the United States can not only be the Philippines, sugar, hemp, tobacco, coconuts and other commodities, the United States can completely import from Cuba, Hawaii, and other countries in Southeast Asia.
That is to say, when the economic structure of a country is completely dependent on another country, the country is equivalent to handing over the door of life, losing the chip of economic checks and balances, and the suzerainty can pinch it as much as it wants.
The economic structure was completely dependent on the suzerainty, followed by the complete loss of independence of the country, even if it was nominally independent, but in fact it was still a colony that depended on the sniffles of the people.
The second serious consequence is that the Philippines loses the pricing power of commodities, and the rise and fall of prices and profits fluctuate in full accordance with the fluctuations in the US market.
Most of the goods in the Philippines must be exported to the United States, so the price of the US market is high, the Filipino merchants can make more money, and the price of the US market is low, and the Filipino merchants will make less money or even lose money.
For example, in 1929, the United States had a Great Depression, and the price of imported goods could not be too high, which directly caused the Coconut Oil in the Philippines to plummet from $149.8 per ton to $42.56 per ton. Coconut production also plummeted from 89 million pesos to 27 million pesos, recovering to 92 million pesos in 1938 as the U.S. market heated up, and falling to 28 million pesos the following year.
The ups and downs have frightened the Filipino people.
In this regard, the Philippines cannot but sell.
If the Philippines does not sell, those farmers will not earn a penny and can only drink the northwest wind.
The third serious consequence is that the Philippines has no opportunity to upgrade its industry, and the fate of the country is locked at a very low level.
Due to the stimulus of the interests of commodity exports to the United States, the low-end industrial chains of sugar, hemp, coconut, and tobacco have absorbed nearly 80% of the population of the Philippines, so that the Philippines, which could have exported grain, has become a country that cannot provide for food.
Such an economic structure has formed a very strong path dependence, and if anyone engages in industrial upgrading in the Philippines, it will not only move the interests of large landlords and big businessmen, but also may cut off the livelihood of the bottom peasants, which is very difficult.
Moreover, in these low-end industries, because the export path is stable, Filipino businessmen form a de facto monopoly operation, so there is no incentive to upgrade technology, transform equipment, increase peasant incomes and expand the domestic market.
As a result, many countries in the world have sugar industries, but the Philippines produces only 50% of the sugarcane acres in Cuba and 15% in Hawaii, which is the lowest yield per acre in the world.
As a result, the economic structure of the Philippines has a vicious circle, the more dependent on the United States, the more prosperous the low-end industries, the greater the amount of exports to the United States, and the more backward the technology and equipment.
The fate of the Philippines is locked at a very low level, and it will not be able to turn over for a hundred years.
Four
The fate of the Philippines is, in fact, the fate of all colonies, the fate of all third world countries.
The United States has carried out a lot of modern industrial construction in the Philippines, not because the United States is a philanthropist, but because modern industrial construction is conducive to the United States to rule the Philippines.
The United States runs education in the Philippines not because the United States has no class, but because the United States wants to assimilate the Philippines and spread the American culture and political system, or it is not a window of democracy in East Asia.
The fundamental purpose of the above two points is to plunder the interests of the Philippines and use the Philippines as a springboard to plunder the interests of other countries in East Asia.
Everything is virtual, and the real money and silver in hand are real.
No matter how strong the bridges and railways built by the United States, no matter how beautiful the construction of the city, what does it have to do with the Filipino people, who still have to sweat on the plantations, but they can only get half the salary of the same kind of work in the United States, or even lower.
This is particularly similar to India.
Now speaking of India, we all know that Britain left India tens of thousands of kilometers of railways, a large number of steel mills, arsenals, textile factories, but when Britain built railways and factories, raw materials were imported from Britain, engineers were hired from Britain, and funds were borrowed from Britain.
All business activities are to find a way for British commodities and capital, driving the british industrial chain to flourish, and not driving india's industrial chain at all.
After the completion of these railways and factories, the British made a lot of money, and india basically did not change anything in the country's economic ecology except for a bunch of "industrial monsters" on the land.
Before, steelmaking was not possible, and now it is still not steelmaking.
Trains weren't built before, and they still can't be built.
Weapons were not built before, and weapons are still not made.
The fate of a country depends on whether there is a complete industrial chain, whether there is a huge group of industrial workers, whether there is a system to improve for the maintenance of the industrial chain, and whether there is a transformation of the country's social and economic ecology.
Not how much money is made by exporting raw materials, how many factories and railways are on the land.
Some people look back at history and find that all the countries that follow the great powers have developed, and those that have colonized the great powers have made progress, but these developments and progress are false and fragile.
Once the great powers do not want you to develop and progress, you can abandon it at any time, and then colonize another country to let this country feel what is developed and progressive.
How foolish is it to pin the fate of a country on the gifts of the great powers?
What is even more tragic is that the Third World countries such as the Philippines and India before World War II had no choice at all, and could only wait for the gifts of the great powers and lose my life.
Looking back at history now, we need not envy the modern urban and factory railways that these countries could receive without effort, not earned by their own hands, but not by themselves.
We should understand a truth:
For hundreds of years, in this world of strife among nations, only truly independent countries, countries with complete industrial chains, and countries that switch between trade protection and free trade at any time can go to the end.