Duterte is wrong.
Trying to appease the regional bully at the expense of our legal rights to our EEZ isn’t a sustainable strategy. Geography is destiny. China looks at its neighbors as vassals. Besides, neutrality isn’t what it used to be. Sweden and Finland are now members of NATO.
For a while Indonesia had been vigilant defending part of its EEZ that China also claims. President Widodo even visited the contested area, something Duterte was too chicken to do. “The mobilization of this argument appears to be an attempt to rewrite international law in China’s favor and legitimize a territorial claim… Most scholars of the subject regard this argument as flawed on historical grounds and specious on legal ones…”
Unfortunately, Duterte was intimidated enough to describe the Philippines, probably not totally in jest, as a province of China. It was obvious during his term that Duterte was very deferential to Xi Jinping. But Duterte’s tragedy is that China didn’t take him seriously enough to deliver on its promises of economic support. Not even the railroad in Davao, Duterte’s pet project, was delivered by China.
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