Recently, the Philippines has been making frequent moves, and everything has a vague hint of targeting China. First of all, it is disappointing that the Philippines, which received a "letter of invitation" from China, refused to attend the 19th annual meeting of the Western Pacific Naval Forum hosted by China and did not provide any explanation afterwards. In addition, the "shoulder-to-shoulder" military exercise between the United States and the Philippines has also officially begun, with a total of about 16,000 troops dispatched by the two sides, and the location of the military exercise is the northern and western waters of the Philippines, and these two locations correspond to the direction of the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. It can be said that the Philippines' plans are not small.
In such a tense atmosphere, another special signal has been reported in the Philippines in recent days. According to Philippine media, General Romeo Brauna Jr., chief of staff of the Philippine Armed Forces, recently said that the Philippine military is investigating the "influx" of Chinese citizens into different parts of the Philippines. And the reason he gave is very absurd, he believes that among these Chinese who come to the Philippines, there may be "Chinese agents". As a result, he has issued a reminder to the province of Zamboanga Sur, urging them to monitor the entry of Chinese citizens into the province.
There is no doubt that in the context of the recent lack of optimism in Sino-Philippine relations, the Philippine military's "differential treatment" of Chinese is obviously wrapped in a certain political awareness. We do not know whether such an approach was instructed by the United States, but it is clear that it will not do any good for the settlement of the South China Sea issue. It will even accelerate the confrontation between China and the Philippines to the extreme. It is also hoped that the 2 million Chinese in the Philippines can ensure their personal safety in the near future.
In fact, regarding the dispute over the South China Sea issue, the Philippines should listen carefully to the real voices of the outside world, blindly adopt a paranoid line, and only go further and further down the wrong path. Recently, a British scholar made it clear in an interview with the Global Times that as early as 1909, Li Zhun, the commander of the Qing Dynasty's Guangdong naval division, led a warship to the Xisha Islands to patrol and named more than a dozen islands one by one to declare China's sovereignty over the Xisha Islands, and earlier, the Chinese Navy gunboat "Suijing" also rescued 55 passengers on a British ship in distress near the Xisha Islands. All these historical sources justify China's claims in the South China Sea. By contrast, the Philippine narrative on the South China Sea dispute has no legal, historical, or factual basis. To give a simple example, the Philippines refers to the South China Sea as the "West Philippine Sea", which is a coined term that has historically been referred to by many Western voyagers as the "South China Sea."
It can be seen from this that in the face of sufficient historical evidence, some of the practices of the Philippines are completely untenable in the international arena. And they are still happy to do this, wanting to cause chaos on the South China Sea issue, to put it bluntly, they are pretending to be confused and following the United States to point out where to fight. This lack of strategic focus is causing dissatisfaction among a growing number of Filipinos.
Romel Banleyi, the current director of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism, made it clear that in his view, the current Philippine government's pursuit of a "one-sided" foreign policy will not only lose China, an important trading partner, but also make the Philippines an "outlier" within ASEAN. In addition, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's spokesman Harry Roque also frankly expressed his views in an exclusive interview with the "Global Times" reporter in Manila recently, saying that the current Philippine administration's dream that the United States would "rescue" the Philippines in accordance with the "US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty" is a delusion, and stressed that "China will not pose a threat to the national security of the Philippines."
In the final analysis, this path is not in line with the fundamental interests of the Filipino people, and it is a reckless act of dancing with wolves and luring wolves into the house.