Tag Archives: China

komentaryo

China, Duterte, and Philippine democracy

No, I don’t think Duterte is scared of China.

I think that he and his men entered into agreements with China, they signed on for projects and the Belt and Road Initiative, and now cannot even take a stand against whatever aggression our fishermen experience from the Chinese in West Philippines Sea. Government (i.e., the Philippines) is so deep in China deals that it has become difficult to even speak. Utang na loob is one of the more effective forms of silencing for Filipinos after all, and China — cunning as it is — doesn’t even need to invoke it; they just know someone like Duterte would feel so indebted there would be no way he would be able to take a stand.

Government propagandists call it “diplomacy.” But let’s assess this situation for what it is: Duterte put all his eggs in the China basket, and now he can’t even find his balls.

Here’s the ironic part though: China has realized that it doesn’t matter that they hold Duterte by the balls. It doesn’t matter because it doesn’t mean they can do all that they want with and in the Philippines. What it’s up against is the rest of us. And Philippine democracy — no matter how it’s been discredited and put into question by the success of Duterte propaganda — still has its balls intact. (more…)

komentaryo

ChaCha: Duterte’s endgame #SONA2018 #NoToChaCha

The Duterte government is on overdrive, providing us all with requisite distractions from the fact that the Duterte-appointed consultative committee has drafted a federal constitution to the President’s liking, and we’re all back to this discussion, not about whether or not we even want charter change, or if it’s necessary at all, but about how it’s going to happen.

Let that sink in.

Duterte’s propagandists and chacha advocates have been able to bring it to this point when we’re not even discussing whether or not charter change will happen but how it will happen. The President and his people have muscled their way through this charter change push — we’re talking THREE different federal constitutions after all since August 2016 — and it has been able to do this by utilizing what we’ve seen government do consistently and viciously the past two years: chaos-by-design.

We complain that his communications team is terrible, that they are incompetent, but that is part of the grand design. One controversy over one incompetence over one corruption controversy, on loop, layered with the President’s big mouth, and here we are: faced with the threat of charter change so close, sold as a done deal, discussed as if we, the people, have no choice in it.

It is as Duterte and his men have planned. And I realize now that ChaCha was always been Duterte’s endgame, federalism not just a campaign promise he made, but a promise made to him.  (more…)

komentaryo

Andanar’s PNA train wreck

This is all very simple, really. The Philippine News Agency (PNA) has made enough mistakes, has been in the news often enough for being nothing more than a laughable excuse for a newswire service, and ultimately responsibility falls on Communications Secretary Martin Andanar.

After all, I have personally heard him talking about how much he idolizes China’s Xin Hua News Agency, and how he would like to emulate its technology, its offices across the world, its professionalism. The fundamental problem with this of course is that Xin Hua is a state news agency in a country with censorship, where there is no freedom of the press, or of speech. And unless that’s what Andanar hopes for the Philippines, there is absolutely no reason to even think of emulating Xin Hua.

But PNA’s foreign news section is filled with news taken from Xin Hua, and that can only fall on Andanar’s shoulders. Why are you even thinking this news service to be credible source of news about China, and about the world?  (more…)

kultura

Ai Weiwei, beyond Western claims

Though it was apt to kick-off a year with the promise of writing more about art, and hopefully more about art outside of this country (haha!), with the first Ai Weiwei exhibit in China, something that I happened upon when I was there in September, and rebelling against the very fixed and strict schedule set for the media group I was with. So I got in a cab and asked in my Chinese-English (which is really just English with a hopefully successful Chinese accent, haha), to be brought to 798 Art District, 30 minutes away without traffic, a wonderful wonderful space for art and creativity, and art selling, inevitably.

(more…)

komentaryo

letter from China 1

A trip to China at this point in time can only be embroiled in questions about the crisis that is the West Philippine Sea dispute.

But also it is about everything that we know of China from third world Philippines, where global news means Western media, talking about China and Asia using a gaze that is far from objective, and always necessarily – and maybe inevitably – about protecting the interests of the world-power-that-be, i.e., America.

There is nothing like seeing Asia as separate from America, to realize that we might really only be understanding very little about the world. (more…)