THE 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China was celebrated last Tuesday, October 1, with a military parade along the Avenue of Eternal Peace in Tienanmen Square in Beijing. It is a time of some difficulty in the midst of a trade war initiated by United States (US) President Donald Trump; thus Chinese President Xi Jinping chose to declare, “No force can shake the foundation of this great nation. No force can stop the Chinese people from forging ahead.”
China has had a rich and checkered history. It was the leading nation for millennia, when its ships explored the world and all roads led to China in the era of the Silk Road trade. It suffered a century of humiliation at the hands of newly rising nations, mostly from the West, until the revolution led by Mao Zedong in 1949, followed by the economic transformation led by Deng Xiaoping in 1976. The stability and balance of state economic planning plus private entrepreneurial initiative has proved to be the magic formula that has transformed China from a poor feudal state into the world’s second biggest economy today after the US.
China has signed agreements with 136 countries and 30 international organizations for its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), today the biggest global partnership. At the same time, it is leading the formation of a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that will join the ten ASEAN nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia, with six ASEAN neighbors – China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, and New Zealand.
China today is the Philippines’ top trading partner; it recently became the largest export market for Philippine bananas. It is one of our largest foreign investment sources. It is involved – either through soft loans or outright grants – in many projects of the Philippine government’s “Build, Build, Build” infrastructrure program, notably the Chico River Pump Irrigation project, the New Centennial water source Kaliwa Dam, and the Philippine National Railways in Mindanao.
The Philippines and China have some conflicting interests and claims in the South China Sea, but these are issues we hope to settle through bilateral diplomatic means as well as through a Code of Conduct agreement between China and the ASEAN.
There was a recent exchange of claims over Scarborough Shoal but it is something our two nations have agreed will be settled at some future date through friendly diplomatic means. In the meantime, as China’s Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua said, we will soon undertake a joint exploration and development of oil and gas resources in the Reed Bank in another part of the South China Sea.
China has thus reached out to many nations with economic assistance and partnership. We join in greeting it on its 70th anniversary, hopeful that it will soon recover from the difficulties of the trade war, and that the economic programs it has initiated around the world, including the Philippines, will bear fruit in greater economic growth and progress.
