Who are the real barbarians?

China Daily, a state-owned Chinese newspaper, recently released an AI-generated video depicting Filipinos as monkeys. It was a racist, repulsive and inexcusable act meant to dehumanize and mock Filipinos.

A monkey wearing a barong, farmer’s hat and tattered trousers sought to depict Filipinos as poor, backward and uncivilized. Arms marked “USA” and “Japan” order it to sing, portraying us as trained animals serving foreign masters. Called stupid, the monkey receives a sheet marked “South China Sea Arbitration Award,” implying our legal victory was written abroad. It is then thrown into the sea and blasted by a Chinese coast guard water cannon.

The message was vicious. That Filipinos are akin to animals. That we are too stupid to formulate our own foreign policy. Too weak to stand without foreign masters and too insignificant to possess rights of our own. Once abandoned by our allies, we can be hunted, humiliated and punished by China.

The video was not satire – it was a state-backed campaign to condition audiences worldwide to regard Filipinos as inferior and deserving of humiliation and abuse.

Every Filipino should be enraged and stand in protest. I, for one, condemn both the act and the Chinese Communist Party without reservation.

Published two days before the 10th anniversary of the 2016 Arbitral Award, the video came from China Daily, a state-owned propaganda outlet. Beijing denies it reflects official policy. What cowardly nonsense. China Daily is neither independent nor beyond government control. It is among Beijing’s principal propaganda instruments designed for foreign audiences.

The video clearly had four objectives: to discredit the Arbitral Award; portray the Philippines as an American and Japanese puppet; warn other Southeast Asian states against resisting Beijing and normalize the dangerous idea that Filipinos deserve humiliation and punishment from the Chinese state.

China could not defeat us in court, so it portrayed us as animals. It could not refute the law, so it resorted to racism. It could not defend its claims through reason, so it produced a digital minstrel show. How low can a nation go.

Let history speak for itself

China never fails to remind the world that it possesses one of humanity’s oldest civilizations. Indeed, it does. But being ancient does not necessarily means being civilized. A nation may possess poetry, philosophy, porcelain and palaces while its rulers maintain the instincts of barbarians.

Five historical examples prove my point.

First was Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. Mao seized farms and grain while imposing impossible production targets. As millions starved, Mao’s officials continued confiscating food while concealing the famine. Some 30 million people died. Parents watched their children waste away because one dictator refused to admit failure. This was more than a disastrous policy, it was mass human sacrifice to protect Mao’s pride. Talk about barbaric  inhumanity.

Second was the Cultural Revolution. Mao encouraged young Red Guards to attack anyone accused of opposing communism or preserving China’s old culture. Students beat teachers, children denounced parents and intellectuals were tortured, publicly humiliated or driven to suicide. In Guangxi, political fanaticism even led to documented cannibalism. Victims were killed and eaten – not from hunger, but from ideological hatred. Talk about beastliness.

Third was the one-child policy. For 35 years, the Chinese state claimed ownership over women’s bodies. It enforced compulsory contraception, sterilization and forced abortion. In 2012, Feng Jianmei was seized while seven months pregnant because her family could not pay the fine. Officials forcibly aborted her child and left her beside the body for display. Talk about bureaucratized brutality.

Fourth was the Tiananmen Square massacre. In June 1989, young Chinese demanded accountability, cleaner government and freedom. The Communist Party answered with rifles and tanks. Civilians were shot in the streets. Bodies were removed, survivors arrested and families silenced. Beijing then tried to erase the atrocity from national memory. A regime that fears unarmed students and even the memory of their courage is neither civilized nor strong. Talk about cowardly bullies.

Fifth were the Communist land-reform killings. The government branded landowners and ordinary citizens as “class enemies.” They were publicly humiliated, beaten and executed without trial. About two million people perished. The Party encouraged neighbors to betray one another, deliberately using terror as a tool for governance. Talk about a violent society.

These crimes expose the grotesque hypocrisy of a regime that dares to depict Filipinos as monkeys.

The same barbaric instinct governs Beijing’s rejection of international law. China signed UNCLOS, enjoyed its protections and then repudiated the 2016 ruling when the tribunal rejected its claims. Civilized states honor agreements. Barbarians replace law with intimidation, reason with brute force and legal argument with water cannons.

China may now be wealthy and powerful. But money cannot buy civility. Glittering skylines cannot conceal a government that bullies smaller states and treats international law as an inconvenience.

China still mourns its “century of humiliation” under Japan and Western powers. Yet now that it has risen, Beijing treats smaller states with the same arrogance and predatory instinct it once accused its tormentors of. Japan, at least, transformed itself into a responsible, respected and trusted global actor. China has acquired power and became a global pariah.

The DFA has protested and demanded the video’s removal, but we expect much more than that. It must respond firmly and decisively – not retreat into the same timid posture it adopted when Beijing targeted Defense Secretary Teodoro and Commodore Tarriela. Anything less would suggest that appeasing China matters more than defending Filipino dignity.

And to China’s Filipino apologists, explain why your patron depicted your own people as monkeys. Tell us why racism, humiliation and simulated violence should be tolerated in the name of “friendship.”

China Daily is goading the world to laugh at Filipino barbarians. History shows us who the real barbarians are.

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aj_masigan