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Text: Zhang Runchen
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introduction
Did you know that the Philippines used to be the only middle-income country in Asia, the Philippines used to be the closest developed country in Asia, and the Philippines used to be a "paradise" that everyone in Southeast Asia yearned for. Today, however, Manila is a combination of a bustling hotel and a slum.
Today's Philippines has long become a "poor man's hell", and countless poor people in Manila live by eating the garbage discarded by the rich every day. The Philippines is a country that doesn't see any hope at all...
(Filipino Poor)
1. "False Glory"
The reason why the Philippines was once so glorious was mainly due to its unique geographical location. The Philippines is located directly south of the East Asian continent, and Fujian Province and Guangdong Province, which have developed trade with China, can be said to be an important distribution point for trade, and also a "transit station" for Chinese merchants to continue their trade to the south.
For Western colonizers, the Philippines can also be used as a "springboard" to reach out to East Asia, so it is also very important to manage this forward base well.
When we zoom in again, we see that the Philippines is also a node in the trade of the Americas. The reason why the Spanish colonizer's "Manila galleon" was called this is also a concentrated reflection of its importance.
(Philippines)
Therefore, for the colonists, running the "giant trading port" of the Philippines well is naturally beneficial and harmless. And more importantly, the Philippines itself is relatively rich in resources, especially food resources. The climate of the Philippines determines that it must be rich in various fruits, and these tropical fruits are not seen in the north.
As the saying goes, tropical fruits from the Philippines are bestsellers on the northern continent. To develop the planting industry on a large scale, it is necessary to build plantations, and with plantations, roads are needed for transportation, and with roads, cities will naturally develop. In this way, the Philippines has developed step by step, and the urbanization of the Philippines has begun to manifest itself.
(Philippines)
However, this development is, to some extent, deformed. Because the ultimate beneficiary of trade is all colonizers, and the owners of plantations are also colonizers. Since large-scale plantation development requires a large amount of land, the development of the Philippines has been accompanied by extremely serious land annexation.
And it was this that laid the groundwork for the future decline of the Philippines...
Second, the precursor to collapse
In 1898, the United States passed the Spanish-American War to successfully seize control of the Philippines. After the United States took control of the Philippines, the backward traditional colonial rule of Spain also disappeared. On the contrary, the advanced "capital control" model of the United States has begun to appear in the Philippines.
(Philippines)
A large amount of American capital and American companies quickly poured into the Philippines, and the Philippines officially became a dumping ground for American goods, a raw material supply field, and a paradise for capital investment. The fragile industries of the Philippines were quickly crushed by American capital after losing the protection of Spanish tariffs.
In 1909, the United States forced the Philippines to sign the Penn Aldridge Act, which allowed the United States to plunder various raw materials from the Philippines duty-free. Before World War II, 85 percent of the Philippines' imports came from the United States, and 90 percent of its exports went to the United States.
(Philippines)
Various cash crop plantations have seriously occupied the original arable land, and the export of goods from the United States has also completely lost the hope of developing industry in the Philippines. The huge share of the United States in Philippine trade has caused the Philippines to lose even the freedom of trade.
In 1939, only 4 percent of the country's workers were employed by local industrial entities, while the remaining 96 percent were employed by foreign capital. However, this did not affect the "prosperity" of the Philippines, because the influx of foreign investment has made the Philippines' ostensible modernization faster.
(Philippines)
In 1938, foreign capital inflows to the Philippines amounted to $425 million, 60 percent of which was U.S. capital. It can be seen that during the Great Depression, the investment of American capital in the Philippines did not decrease in the slightest, and American capital regarded the Philippines as a "refuge of capital". Concentrated trade and investment have led to an extreme distorted boom in the production of low-end consumer goods in the Philippines.
Large food processing plants have sprung up, and the Philippines will never worry about the market, and the United States and China will have markets everywhere. This also led to the birth of a group of "comprador classes" in the Philippines, which were the "local wealthy families" and "gate valve families" in the Philippines in the future. After the independence of the Philippines, gatekeeper politics almost completely dominated the Philippines.
(Obvious class)
Third, Filipino-style poverty is hopeless
After independence, the Philippines still maintained the inertia of rapid development. However, after independence, there is a problem in the Philippines, that is, the industries that were originally directly controlled by American capital have also become indirectly controlled by American capital, and the local gate valve of the Philippines has become the "middleman" in it.
However, gatekeepers were often more vicious than colonizers. On the basis of the original income, the workers had to be skinned by the gate valve again. Filipino workers' incomes are rapidly declining, and the domestic economy of the Philippines is rapidly beginning to languish. But for the Philippine gatekeeper, American capital, or the United States itself at this time, the Philippines is no longer important.
(Philippines)
The Philippines itself is an export-oriented economy, and even if workers don't have any money in their hands, they always have to work in order to survive. And the products of the Philippines are not sold to Filipinos, but exported to foreign countries. U.S. capital used to see the Philippines as a dumping ground for goods, but after World War II, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, and even Europe were all "potential markets" for the United States.
A small Philippines is no longer important. For the United States, after acquiring Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, the value of the Philippines is gradually being lost. Because these three places are far closer to the mainland than the Philippines.
(Philippines)
The three forces that controlled the Philippines chose to abandon the Philippines at the same time after the war, and the Philippines eventually became what it is today. 10% of the big families in the Philippines control two-thirds of the country's wealth. The richest 20% of the population in the Philippines consumes 8 times as much as the poorest 20%!
In the Philippines, it is difficult to see hope, and class solidification has become an objective fact. No matter how hard you try, a poor person will always be a poor person, unless you can leave the country. But where can Filipinos go without the country?
(Philippines)
Resources
Lin Xingjian.Filipino-style poverty makes people desperate[J].Communist Party Member, 2012(1):1.
Chen Zhanjie.Philippines:Want to say goodbye to poverty[J].China Economic and Trade Herald, 1999(21):44.)