We Fear China’s Economic Retaliation

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

If not dangerously water cannoned and intentionally rammed countless of times our supply mission vessels to our Marines ensconce in the ghost ship’s BRP Sierra Madre (LS-57) at the Second Thomas Shoal (known too as Ayungin Shoal), the Chinese Coast Guard brazenly coerced recently our poor fishermen to throw the shells they caught back in the water of Scarborough Shoal – a part of the Philippines territory.

China President Xi Jinping (left) and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. (Photo credit: YouTube)

All these patent violations of our sovereignty meted only the unabashed China a series of diplomatic protests from the Philippines. Why we could not do a Widodo?

CAN WE DO A WIDODO?

Widodo is Indonesian President Joko Widodo who ordered with intrepidity the firing and sinking of foreign vessels caught poaching in his country’s economic zone.

We could not do it because we fear more the economic retaliation of China than her military response.

China and the Philippines know that in case the former shot or bomb our Lilliputian coast guard and navy it triggered the automatic military intervention of the juggernaut's United States military because of the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty.

CHINA FEARS THE MALACCA STRAIT

As long as China has no answer to the choke point in the Malacca Strait – where almost U.S$ 4 trillion of world’s trade and 60% of China oil import pass there yearly - it would not start a shooting war with the U.S otherwise she gutted to the ground her already plunging economy (through real estate meltdown where 70% of family assets are tied up ) through those lethal U.S nuclear subs. 

President Xi Jinping and his top apparatchiks in the Communist Party know this dilemma by courting mass demonstrations in China and military takeover from messianic faction in the army sympathetic to the plight of the suffering population.

CHINA'S TRUMP CARD VS PH

China’s trump card against the Philippines however is its imports from our country. By stopping to patronize them means tens if not hundreds of thousands of jobs and U. S$10.97 Billion (P616 billion) would be lost in the Philippines.

 We exported P616 billion to China in year 2022 according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade. Some of them were electronic equipment, ores slag and ash, copper, edible fruits, nuts, peel of citrus fruit, melons and fish, crustaceans, molluscs, and aquatics invertebrates.

Our import from China was U. S$29.8 billion (P1.6 trillion) billion for the same year.

Our five top exporting countries in 2022 were U.S, Japan, China, Hong Kong and Singapore with revenues of US$ 12.4 billion, US$11 billion, US$10.9 billion, U.S$10.4 billion, and U.S$4.9 billion, respectively.

Moreover, we have 242,107 Chinese tourists that arrived in the country from January 1 to November 27, 2023. 

We have limited options to challenge China because we are a poor country.

If our total export in 2022 is a mere US$78, 929, 717, 000, our neighbors' Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore have a mammoth exports of US$291, 979, 103, 000 US$469, 548, 577, 000 and US$515, 077, 895, 000 in the same year (Seasea Stats).

As the maxim says: Beggars like us (like those military hands me down from our patron the U.S) cannot be choosers.