The new mandarinate
October 5th, 2002
Nothing the Chinese ambassador to the Philippines can say—that it was Justice Secretary Hernando Perez who first raised his voice, or that he, the ambassador, lost his temper because he could not understand Philippine laws—can justify his shouting at Perez and his pounding on the table.
It was not only undiplomatic; it was also presumptuous and ill mannered. Although ambassadors are supposed to be extensions of the sovereign power of the countries they represent, they are nevertheless guests in the countries of their assignment and are expected to behave accordingly.
Ambassadors are at the same time in their host countries at the sufferance of the latter, which is why they can be summoned at any time, made aware of the host country’s sentiments on issues that concern both countries, and told to convey those sentiments to their governments.
It is of course true that some foreign ambassadors to the Philippines have acted like proconsuls or governors general whose opinions, if not exactly as weighty as law, they expect to matter in the highest councils of this country.
It was in the shadow of that tradition that the U.S. ambassador only a few months ago saw nothing undiplomatic in discussing official corruption during a speech before foreign correspondents based in Manila, despite that problem is being, in the final analysis, a purely internal matter.
In the years following 1946—when Philippine independence was recognized by the United States—there was, after all, a succession of American ambassadors to this country who assumed themselves the successors of the governors general the United States had assigned to govern the Philippines during the period of formal colonization, and who acted accordingly. They threw their weight around, presumed that their former colonials would treat them as their superiors, and generally defer to their views and wishes.
They were seldom mistaken in their presumption. It was a rare Philippine official, even a rare president, who could ignore the American ambassador’s “advice.” It was no secret, for example, that during the presidency of Manuel Roxas, as well as of Ramon Magsaysay, the American ambassador had more than the President’s ear; he also had his full cooperation in seeing to it that U.S. interests were protected and that U.S. views prevailed.
That tradition has of course been eroded, though not fully, by 50 years of independence no matter how incomplete. Despite the Arroyo government’s efforts at recreating the same engagement with the United States that prevailed in the 1950s, the U.S. ambassador’s remarks on corruption were nevertheless regarded as undiplomatic and a form of intervention in Philippine internal affairs.
The time when the U.S. ambassador can throw his weight around with impunity has passed, and that tradition notwithstanding, the current Chinese ambassador’s behavior was surprising. The ambassador of the People’s Republic of China has never had the U.S. ambassador’s own proconsular past (and, to some extent, present), which of course is a good thing for Philippine sovereignty. The Philippines was never a colony of China, despite the close historic and cultural ties that bind both countries. Philippine relations with the new China that emerged in 1949 are also of recent vintage, having been reestablished only in 1975.
Of even more relevance is that the new China, when it established relations with the Philippines in 1975, took the greatest pains to impress upon the Philippine government that it regarded the Philippines as an equal in the community of states. Not only did the joint communiqué the two countries issued upon the reestablishment of relations emphasize that equality, it also made it a point to recall the two countries’ bitter and common experience with colonialism. Indeed China used to emphasize what the two countries had in common rather than how they differed.
In the years that followed the reestablishment of Philippines-China relations, and even as China began to emerge as one the world’s major military powers sustained by the world’s biggest economic system, neither its ambassadors nor its government ever tried to bully the Philippines despite such potential sources of conflict as the dispute over the Spratlys.
A major reason certainly was the emphasis of the foreign policy of China on the need to break the new China’s past isolation by cultivating the friendship of other nations whatever their political and economic systems. The extent to which that policy was observed was evident during the initial years of the resumption of trade between the Philippines and China, during which the terms were generally favorable to the Philippines. For example, the Philippines purchased Chinese crude oil at extremely friendly prices during the oil crisis of the mid-1970s, even as the Chinese accepted in trade Philippine products that in some instances were clearly inferior.
It should be said, however, that China has changed since then. Philippine-Chinese relations were reestablished when Mao Zedong was alive and still chaired the Communist Party of China, and when Zhou Enlai was still prime minister. Aside from being the architects of a free and powerful China, Mao and Zhou also took their policy of treating other countries as equals seriously.
That was before a new mandarinate arose in China as a result of the Deng Xiaoping reforms.
Today, socialists only in name, who are actually capitalists in deed, rule China. A new class of privilege has seized control of both the Chinese Communist Party as well as the Chinese state. These have had a profound impact on Chinese foreign policy, particularly where it matters most.
The Mao-Zhou pledge, made in the 1960s, that China will never be a superpower is seriously being undermined by the new mandarins’ emphasis on the modernization of the Chinese armed forces, particularly its construction of a blue water navy that can project Chinese power in Asia—an aspect of its military modernization that deviates from the Mao-Zhou policy of strengthening the Chinese military solely for defensive purposes.
China is at the same time already a world economic and political power, a giant that, having awoken in 1949, is anxious to assume its place in Asia as its leading power with whom other countries will have to come to terms.
This is not the China that in the 1970s could say that it was more interested in friendship than profit, and which regarded itself as part of the community of nations still struggling for development. This is a China concerned primarily with its own prosperity and prerogatives in a world in which it knows its own power and can bully weaker nations.
It is not difficult to see why the Chinese ambassador can be so undiplomatic as to lose his temper, pound on the table, and shout at a Philippine cabinet official. The China he represents is, after all, no longer the China of Mao and Zhou, but a China that in many respects is no different from any other power that regards the less powerful with contempt and as bound to do its bidding.
(ABS-CBNNEWS.COM, September 25, 2002)