NAME: VILLAREAL, ARIELLE FAITH R.

SECTION: AB FS 301
SUBJECT: INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
PROFESSOR: JUMEL G ESTRAÑERO
DATE: MARCH 5,2018

The Need Affair: The Intertwined Relations of the United States, People’s Republic of China
and The Philippines

The Philippines and the United States of America has always been bilateral partners. Ever
since the start of the 20th century when they took over the Philippines after the Spanish
colonization. The US has also assisted the Philippines establish a government. Ever since then,
the states have been engaged in a mutual security treaty that will benefit the said states. But there
are issues to this relationship, when President Duterte started his term, it was found that the
machines and guns that were sold to us by the US was kind of made to rely on the US arsenals
and would not be useful if the Philippines will not purchase from the US.
The states have been in a one-sided verbal fight about its relations, well the Philippine
President Duterte’s foul mouthed words against the Superpower. But the US hasn’t responded to
the verbal assaults. There is also the issue of human rights that the US has been trying to engage
in and that has been a reason for the Philippine President to claim that he does not want to be an
ally of the US anymore. But cleared it up that he wanted the Philippines to have its own foreign
policy rather than rely on the policies of the US because those policies aren’t in the best inrest of
the Philippines.
This is where China comes in, historically China and the Philippines has been trading
with each even before the colonization’s began. Today, Rodrigo Duterte seems to be re-aligning
the alliance to China and Russia instead of the United States. The ideology of this seems to be
the idiom “Do not put your eggs in one basket”. It will be helpful to the Philippines if we have
more relations with other states rather than confining itself with just one ally. The Philippines,
during the PNOY Administration, has been in a bad relationship with China because of the South
China Sea Disputes wherein both states claim the sovereignty over the island and reefs there,
specifically Spratly’s and Scarborough Shoal . But Rodrigo Duterte seems to have a different
plan. He has been in and out of China, and meeting with their President Xi Jinping. Other than
that, the current Administration granted China permission to explore the Benham Rise, yet
another Philippine reef that is full of unknown resources. There has been agreements of Foreign
Investments from China, that will surely employ a lot of Filipinos. But could this could be a bad
idea, because China has been known to be somewhat of a masked state, and they could do to the
Philippines what they did to Bangladesh if we become too dependent.
According to the Philippine Ambassador to China, trade will be the priority of the current
administration as well as good relations with its neighbors before the South China Sea dispute.
During the 1780’s the US has already been interested in China. And by the middle of the
th
19 century the relations surpassed the aim of economic relationship. The bilateral relation of the
states took a hit when the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882; this marked the first
time the U.S. had restricted immigration. The longest period of Sino-American tension came
after the founding of the mainland People’s Republic of China (the PRC) in 1949, when Mao
Zedong’s Communists drove Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists onto the island of Taiwan. It was
the former US President Nixon that re-established the relations with PRC. But Mao thought that
the relations should stay in the economic level and prevented political liberalization.
Today, China and the US act like the old European states, they work together but do not
trust each other. They have the biggest economies and their trade shapes the world’s. But their
policies and ideologies oppose one another.
Japan is also a state that concerns these three states. Japan has been in an alliance with the
US for the past 50 years. The U.S.-Japan alliance has explicitly been the cornerstone of U.S.
engagement in Asia, with overall U.S. policy in the region running through Tokyo. While, China
and Japan have clashed frequently about their painful history and Ties between China and Japan,
have also been plagued by a long-running territorial dispute over a cluster of East China Sea
islets. But the Philippines should not be confined to just these but it should develop its relations
with other nations like India, the Middle East and other regional organizations that could develop
it further.
With the Philippines in an alliance with these powers, a war could be stopped due to
common interests. Although, I think it would be hard to make the states see in a single point of
view they would be able to civil with one another. If the Philippine President keeps this up the
states can work together, for the betterment of the world. The trade relations will grow not just
for the Philippines but the entire world because the biggest economies work together. This will
cause an improvement in the world economy and security. This pivot toward China is a good
tactic for the Philippines Security as of this moment.
China will most likely further develop and probably reach the economic level of the
United States in the next ten years. So the Philippines as well as the ASEAN nations ] should
stay on its good side and develop relations with it. If the economic relations of the Philippines
with China and the US continue to progress, the economic stability of the Philippines will be
well founded. This will cause the Philippines to be a progressive and a more developed nation
not just economically but security wise as well.
The Philippines should stay on the neutral side of things because this Philippines will
receive help from not just one power but both. China will be utilizing the islands and reefs that
they have developed so the Philippines should keep watch and prevent exploitation of the
resources. Multilateral cooperation will always be the best for the Philippines because it is a
developing country. Although there should always be a focus on the progression in the
development of the security forces of the Philippines not just its economic stability.
References:
https://www.heritage.org/asia/report/the-complicated-history-us-relations-china
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/philippines/forrel-us.htm
http://www.atimes.com/equi-balancing-politics-philippine-realities-new-sino-us-centrism/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iQTCOjITKc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM7jV3BePi4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9L7V3tSeSE
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2017/03/17/426709/u-s-japan-alliance-
age-elevated-u-s-china-relations/