Strike Communist China where it’s most vulnerable
Take the offensive against China, not militarily, experts advocate. It can be economic, diplomatic, financial or legal. All must exploit vulnerabilities of the China Communist Party.
Stop exporting to China, says international maritime lawyer Jay Batongbacal, PhD. Deprive CCP of our nickel, coal and rare metals. Enjoin allies to follow suit. Deny it of industrial raw materials. Its manufactures will slow down further. Workers will gripe louder.
Close down Chinese mines. Most pretend to be small scale, with only shovels, picks and wheelbarrows. Yet they use destructive, pollutive dynamite, backhoes and dump trucks. Their barges ruin foreshores.
Only bribee local officials benefit from Chinese miners.
China turns metals into weapons and surveillance systems against us. Its mines are in Philippine highlands that the CCP can use for military offensive, former interior secretary Rafael Alunan warns. Same with wharfs and oil depots facing the West Philippine Sea, Pacific-side Benham Rise and Sibutu Strait.
Stop importing food and ingredients from China.
On Sept. 3-9, 207 Chinese maritime militia trawlers poached from our Julian Felipe, Rozul, Escoda and Panatag Reefs. Each trawler hauls 12 tons of catch per day, the China information ministry boasts. That’s 2,484 tons that the 207 trespassers stole per day that week.
They sold their loot of endangered mameng (Napoleon wrasse) in Hainan, Hong Kong and Macao for 440 RMB (P3,500) a kilo. The galunggong (round scad) they “exported” to Navotas and other fish ports – dunked in formalin to look fresh and firm.
The trawlers decreased to 123 on Sept. 10-16. Still, we patronized their catch of 1,476 tons per day that week.
The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources should stop endorsing fish imports from China, duty-free at that. Filipinos can make do with bangus (milkfish) and tilapia from local ponds and lakes.
Why buy Chinese tilapia from rivers onto which their factories dump toxic chemicals? Why deprive our fishermen of income after they risked lives and limbs being chased by China Coast Guard gunboats beyond our 12-mile territorial waters?
Harmful fertilizers and pesticides contaminate Chinese vegetables. Crooked Customs men let those in – no phytosanitary clearance from the Bureau of Plant Industry. Consume at your own risk.
Close down POGOs right now, Batongbacal adds. CCP uses offshore gaming for money laundering.
Forfeit in favor of the state all lands bought by Chinese, Rep. Ace Barbers says. Aliens are prohibited from owning real estate. The Land Registration Authority can reassign to the national or local governments lots that were fraudulently acquired.
Restrict student and retiree visas. More than 3.12 million Chinese arrived in 2016-2018. A good number, in their mid-30s or soldiery age, obtained such residencies. They’re spies.
Demand recompense for destroyed reefs: Panatag, Rozul, Escoda, Zamora, Kagitingan. At the same time, seek The Hague arbitration of our 150-mile extended continental shelf beyond the 200-mile exclusive economic zone.
Manila can ask the tribunal to debar China from any more reef crushing and menacing of fishermen while arbitration is ongoing. If China persists, the court will rule against it, retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio foresees.
A second arbitration need not cost $3 million like the first – victorious – one in July 2016. The amount is negligible compared to the resource value in WPS, which is double the Philippines’ 30-million-hectare land area.
Drill oil and gas once and for all at Recto Bank, Carpio adds. Malacañang must not delay for a fourth time Forum Energy’s rig deployment.
Expose to the UN General Assembly the CCP’s aggression in the WPS. No need to put it to a vote, Batongbacal says. Merely unmasking the CCP will show the UN’s 193 members its vileness.
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Social activism with Pancho Villaraza was fulfilling. Comrades and colleagues revered his strategizing. He led them to victory in varied causes.
Among those: recovering part of Marcos’ stolen wealth and exacting recompense for the flawed NAIA-3 construction. Also, breaking up the telecom monopoly, ousting a president and a chief justice and exposing corruption by a presidential spouse.
His staff lawyers thrilled in observing his leadership. So did I as journalist.
Striking for me were two of his two strong personal traits:
One, his devotion to family despite long work hours. He and wife Sally were inseparable in socials and travels. His anguished tone on the phone four years ago was haunting, as he narrated how COVID took away his beloved, and grateful to friends and strangers who facilitated their children’s rush homecoming.
Two, his delight for the history of his Majayjay, Laguna hometown. Pancho was born post-War, in 1949. Yet, while stealing puffs in his no smoking office, he detailed the Japanese invaders’ failure to subjugate his ninuno despite months of shelling. The secret, he beamed, there was only one road to and from poblacion, which guerrillas guarded.
Pancho passed away on Sept. 14 at age 74. Deepest condolences to his children Stephanie, Angelique, Aaron and Abigail, and grandchildren. Inurnment today, Sept. 18, at the Family Mausoleum in Everest, Muntinlupa, after the 2 p.m. mass at Santuario de San Antonio, Makati.
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