Philippines Edges Towards China As Cambodia's Leader Praises Duterte's Tactics

Forbes | 14 December 2016

At a summit of Asian leaders in September, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte suddenly ditched a prepared remark about his country’s world arbitration court victory over China and lashed out at the United States instead. The court had ruled that Beijing lacks legal basis for its claim to most of the South China Sea where it has chafed against Vietnam as well as the Philippines over dueling sovereignty claims. But Washington had criticized Duterte’s anti-drug campaign on suspicion of extrajudicial killings, a catalyst for his remark at the East Asia Summit.

That wasn't all. A month later Duterte, in office from June 30, visited China to help mend relations that had been strained since 2012 over the maritime sovereignty dispute. China pledged $24 billion in development aid and it was understood the two sides would shelve the sovereignty differences or work them out. And it gets even better.

This week Duterte, on one of his regular trips overseas, met Prime Minister Hun Sen in Cambodia, and Philippine media say the host admired him for resisting the United States. Washington colonized the Philippines for about five decades and now helps in its military defense. Duterte has faulted the U.S. government for giving only development aid since then to his Southeast Asian nation of 102 million people and taking what it wants in return.

Hun Sen “sees in (Duterte) an ally in terms of standing up against Western countries," Philippine Ambassador Christopher Montero was quoted saying in his country’s media.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (R) speaks to Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte (L) during a signing ceremony at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh on December 14, 2016. (TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty Images)

They're also becoming allies in standing with China, and the two-day visit this week shows Manila standing ever closer. The two heads of state were expected to discuss peaceful resolution of the South China Sea issue ahead of Duterte’s taking over as chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc next year. As chair of the 10-nation group, which includes Cambodia, he can decide whether to omit the South China Sea dispute from the 2017 agenda.

Cambodia doesn’t claim part of the 3.5 million-square-km (1.4 million-square-mile) sea that’s packed with fisheries and possible fossil fuel reserves. But the old China ally from the Mao Zedong days blocked ASEAN in July from including in a statement any mention of the arbitration verdict that had come out weeks earlier. Cambodia just so happened to get pledges of $600 million from China for health and education, akin to the pledges that the same largess-laden country offered the Philippines in October in exchange for being nice.

The Cambodia visit this week tilts the Philippines as well as ASEAN further toward China, which in turn can go about passing vessels through other countries’ maritime claims and militarizing small, disputed islets in the sea regardless of the world court arbitration outcome.

“I think the Philippines will continue to assert its claims to Scarborough Shoal and to what it refers to as the West Philippine Sea while essentially accommodating competing claims by China and Vietnam to land features they currently occupy,” says Carl Baker, director of programs at the think tank Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu. The sea and shoal in question lie west of Luzon Island. China claims the same tract. "It seeks to avoid favoring one major power over the other."