TOURISM is one of our key dollar-earning sectors and in 2019, around 1.9 million Chinese tourists alone spent $2.5 billion that year, a big help to our economy seeking full recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hoping to bring back the Chinese tourists, the Department of Tourism was elated during the 3-days January 2023 state visit of Bongbong Marcos (BBM) to President Xi Jinping, where a tourism agreement was signed between Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco and her Chinese counterpart, Culture and Tourism Minister Hu Heping.
“This Implementation Program with China will generate massive employment opportunities and investments across all sectors of tourism throughout the Philippines,” Frasco told the Philippine Daily Inquirer at the time.
While BBM was visiting Beijing that January, another event was going on in Manila: the launching of ‘Project Myoushu’ by ‘Stratbase’ (the group of former foreign affairs secretary Albert del Rosario and former SC associate justice Antonio Carpio). Stratbase is another US-funded local think tank.
It was from this date forward that the Philippines adopted the “Assertive Transparency” doctrine against China as enumerated by retired US Air Force colonel, Ray Powell of the ‘Gordian Knot Institute,’ a US think-tank with deep ties to the Central Intelligence Agency and the US ‘Deep State.’
The aim is to strengthen and boost international support to countries allegedly being “targeted” by China (read: Philippines) by “increasing the reputational cost China pays.”
Assertive transparency involves embedding foreign and local media in Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) missions to “document” and propagandize the imagined “greyzone tactics” of the Chinese Coast Guard’s maritime enforcement methods.
The PCG and US-proxy “civil society” groups like “Atin Ito” also forayed into the game along with the media to provoke maritime incidents with China.
Just a month after the launching of Project Miyoushu and BBM’s visit to China, clashes between thee PCG and the CCG started to erupt within the contested areas in the South China Sea.
Thereafter, there was an almost bi-weekly confrontation between the two sides dutifully headlined in local and international media with China being portrayed repeatedly as the “bully.”
Tensions peaked that during the November 2023 APEC Summit in San Francisco, BBM humbly sought out Chinese President Xi Jinping to ask what can be done to “bring down the temperature, to not escalate the situation in the West Philippine Sea.”
In January 2024 Wescom commander Vice Admiral Alberto Carlos engaged with the Chinese Embassy to, in his words, “operationalize the President’s marching order to deescalate the tension in my area of operation.”
Instead of approval, Carlos would end up being berated by Malacañang, censured by his peers, and forced out of his post.
Right after, PCG spokesperson Jay Tarriela would boast in a media forum in February: “The Philippine Coast Guard has not been told to tone down its ‘assertive transparency strategy. We will continue [with the strategy].”
Our Tourism Department and the Foreign Affairs Department had just worked out the “eVisa” and the 2-weeks “Free Visa” programs specifically for the Chinese to entice their return as tourists.
Meanwhile, we have Tarriela and his foreign curator, Powell, sabotaging Philippines-China understanding.
It is only logical to conclude that both are happy to frustrate efforts at our economic recovery.