How a Miss Universe bet’s reply presaged rise in PH-China sea row

BY MAURO GIA SAMONTE

APRIL 21, 2019

HOME / OPINION / OP-ED COLUMNS / HOW A MISS UNIVERSE BET’S REPLY PRESAGED RISE IN PH-CHINA SEA ROW

In the 1994 Miss Universe Pageant, the American emcee asked the Philippine bet, Bb. Pilipinas Charlene Gonzales, a trivia question that could have ensnared an unprepared beauty contestant into a clumsy, bumbling reply. Gonzales was a heavy favorite among the candidates and a wrong answer could have cost her chances for the crown.

The host crafted the question, thus: “One of the things I’ve learned [about your country] is that you guys have a bunch of islands. How many islands do you have in the Philippines?”

“High tide or low tide?” came Charlene’s quick retort.

The guy got flabbergasted instead, and for a long moment stood there speechless, able only to laugh off his embarrassment, joining the delight of the cheering gallery.

Gathering himself after a while, the host finally spoke, “Give me both.”

“At high tide we have 7,107 islands. At low tide, we have 7,108.”

And the gallery boomed in approval.

Amazing that girl, Charlene, she who is the daughter of one of the most civil actors I worked with in the heyday of my film directing career, Bernard Bonnin. She who eventually marry another swell leading man I handled in a movie, Aga Muhlach. How could she have struck at the key to a conflict that would — in a most literal manner — surface only two-and-a-half decades later.

The reason I recollect that incident, which had turned into some kind of a cause célèbre at the time, was the recent pronouncement by President Rodrigo Duterte for China to back off from the Philippine-occupied islands in the West Philippine Sea. According to recent news accounts, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs has delivered a note verbale to the Chinese Embassy to the same effect as the President’s apparent protest.

Do Duterte’s words indicate a worsening of the tension between China and the Philippines over certain areas in the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea) region?

A judge of events, I would tend to be baffled at best by the development. Beginning with his visit to China in 2016, the President had made good his declared turnaround in foreign policy from heavy dependence on the United States to a strong leaning toward China. During the last Philippine visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in November last year, a total of 29 packages of business investments, infrastructure development, and economic aid and financial grants were cemented between the two countries, auguring highly enhanced friendly relations over the long run.

Then suddenly, newspaper screamed headlines that said: Duterte to China: back off from Panatag.

Is this for real? I ask, scratching my cranium.

A recent press statement by the Philippine-Brics Strategic Studies paints an opposite picture.

“The greater part of the PH-China relations continues in its positive and very beneficial direction, toward prosperity and peace as China became the PH’s top investor country in 2018 with P49 billion investment inflow into the country. Chinese tourist (arrivals) rose by 30% to 1.3 million in 2018 and the goal for 2018 is again 30% growth.”

According to the statement, in March China completed delivery of P1.5 billion worth of engineering equipment donations to the Armed Forces of the Philippines, an item not significantly played up by the local mainstream and alternative media. The latest, April 10, donation to the Philippines from China is the P540-million, 150-bed drug rehabilitation center in Agusan del Sur. The embassy of China reported that the project construction hired 400 local workers and administrative staff during the construction, while only 35 Chinese staff (personnel) were employed in the project, it said.

So nothing in Philippine-China relations is going wrong so as to account for the apparent animosity from the direction of Duterte.

An expert on Chinese affairs, corroborating the Phil-Brics press statement, declared in a private session of ScraMDT (Scrap the MDT, a group working for the abrogation of the Mutual Defense Treaty between the US and the Philippines) that the presidential flare-up is nothing about any Chinese intervention in Philippine-occupied territories in Panatag Shoal (the Philippine name for the Spratlys), but an understandable reaction to the reported presence in the area of tens (some say hundreds) of Chinese vessels. The expert’s assessment of the situation is that though those vessels may not be military ones, they could be part of an understandable Chinese precautionary move against anybody taking possession of, not any in the Spratlys group, but a single special island called Sandy Cay.

What is Sandy Cay? Why is it called that?

Sandy Cay is just a sandbar, a feature covered with sand, hence the name Sandy. In the past, it had been visible only during low tide.

Must not Sandy Cay be the 7,108th island Charlene Gonzales was referring to in the 1994 Miss Universe pageant, which she said could be seen only at low tide? If asked the same question again this time, that answer would be wrong. Sandy Cay is a growing island and over the years, it has increasingly become visible even at high tide.

Sandy Cay has grown into a sea feature, which under the criteria of the United States Convention on the Laws of the Seas (Unclos), can eventually form an island that may be considered a territory.

The Chinese affairs expert holds that China has manifested no intention of developing facilities on Sandy Cay as it did on its possessed territories in the Spratlys. But he admits that those Chinese vessels have had a way of cordoning off the island from potential settlers. If allowed, possession of the feature by settlers would drastically change the character of the sandbar. This would ultimately result in a strategic disadvantage for China.

But the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of President Xi Jinping has surged on to unimaginable reaches across the world since it began in 2013. It contributed immensely to China becoming now the largest economy in the world to the detriment particularly of the US, whose economic woes as a consequence prompted President Donald Trump to enforce high tariff on imports. The development only worsened US financial difficulties since the tariff move has had the effect of isolating the US further from the world economic mainstream created by Xi’s BRI.

Lately, a strong US ally, the European Union, struck a deal with China, soon after EU’s third largest economy, Italy, broke up with it in order to join the BRI.

With the 2nd BRI Forum for International Cooperation about to take place in Beijing next Saturday, April 26, America unleashed what Phil-Brics Strategic Studies termed
Phase 1 — the sensationalizing of the big presence of Chinese vessels near the Spratlys — of US propaganda by way of sabotaging the BRI event.

But as Charlene Gonzales did put it quite aptly, albeit succinctly, two-and-a-half decades ago, it’s really all about the high and low of the tides of the South China Sea.

That President Duterte is attending the Forum for the second time in a row really makes little of the big US sabotage ploy — using the South China Sea issue — against the BRI forum. What’s important are the additional packages of business investments, infrastructure development assistance funds, other grants and aid which he and each and every attendee in the Forum will be getting from China.

https://www.manilatimes.net/how-a-miss-universe-bets-reply-presaged-rise-in-ph-china-sea-row/543077/