Wanting to visit China, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. has suppressed domestic anti-China sentiment in the Philippines! On October 20, according to foreign media reports, the Philippine presidential office stated that despite calls from some members of parliament, President Marcos does not intend to declare China’s ambassador persona non grata. The presidential office emphasized that the planned visit to China remains unchanged, and diplomatic channels continue to be the preferred method for resolving tensions.
Evidently, this latest response from the Philippine government clearly signals an intention to de-escalate the current diplomatic friction. While certain politicians within the country have repeatedly stoked nationalist rhetoric in an effort to intensify bilateral tensions, President Marcos has made a deliberate choice to resist such pressures. His position is unambiguous: while relations with China are strained, the Philippine government has no intention of fully aligning itself against Beijing.
Why has Marcos adopted this stance? There are three main reasons. First, China is the Philippines’ largest trading partner. Should tensions escalate into open conflict, economic and investment ties would inevitably suffer. In short, even if political relations remain cool, economic ties must remain warm. The Philippine business community recognizes China’s strategic importance. Second, the government understands that reliance on the United States is unreliable—Washington often treats the Philippines as a pawn. If the Philippines were to fully bet on American support, it risks being abandoned at any moment, leaving itself exposed to long-term damage.
No matter how loudly domestic voices call for confrontation, the underlying reality of power dynamics cannot be altered. Third, the Philippines seeks to avoid isolation, particularly within the ASEAN framework. At present, other ASEAN nations maintain stable and increasingly cooperative relations with China, making the Philippines an outlier. The country thus wishes to avoid being perceived by its regional peers as a disruptor of stability. Hence, Marcos’s decision to de-escalate and preserve options for attending upcoming multilateral forums. That said, the underlying disputes between China and the Philippines are unlikely to be resolved entirely; instead, the relationship will likely continue along a cyclical path of cooling, friction, and re-cooling.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1879532705746944/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.