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Philippines Experiences Economic Transformation
"Show some respect, or I will curse you at the ASEAN Summit!"
That was in 2016 when Philippine President Duterte publicly confronted Obama's arrogance.
In his view, "No one can interfere with the Philippines, the Philippines is an independent country; the Philippines should not be in a hostile relationship with China, the Philippines should not follow the United States' orders and confront China."
The former "little brother" no longer obeyed, which made the United States very unhappy, but Duterte won more public support.
In the last two months before leaving office, Duterte still had a high approval rating of 67%, becoming the most popular president in the Philippines in 40 years.
Unfortunately, with Duterte's exit from politics and the inauguration of the current Philippine President Marcos Jr., everything has changed again.
The Philippine economy is once again unstable.
The bilateral trade volume between China and the Philippines has declined.
In May 2021, during Duterte's term, the Philippines, which had been poor for decades, still failed to get rid of poverty, but was gradually improving.According to World Bank data, the Philippines is one of the poorest countries in Asia. By the end of 2020, nearly a quarter of Filipinos were living in poverty, with a daily living cost of just $3 per person. Additionally, about 30.7% of Filipino families were suffering from hunger, and 8.7% were experiencing severe hunger, the highest level in 20 years.
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The downtown area of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, is grand and luxurious, but just a few miles away lies a vast area of slums. In order to survive, some people even rely on picking up food waste from restaurants to eat.
Manila is also known as the capital of crime, drugs, human trafficking, and kidnapping.
In order to reverse this situation, Duterte took office and led the Philippines from being "pro-American" to being "pro-China," and cracked down on domestic crime.
Since 2016, China and the Philippines have entered a honeymoon period, and our country has become the Philippines' largest trading partner for several years in a row.
Data from the Philippines shows that in 2023, China was the largest importer and the second-largest exporter of the Philippines, accounting for 23.3% of its imports and 14.8% of its exports.
During the same period, the bilateral trade volume between China and the Philippines reached $71.9 billion, and China's direct investment in Philippine enterprises reached $1.7 billion, ranking first in the world, nearly double that of Japan, which ranked second.
From being "pro-American" to gradually getting closer to our country, the Philippines' bananas, pineapples, coconuts, avocados, frozen fruits, and others have successively entered the Chinese market, bringing tangible benefits to the Filipino people.
The economic performance of the Philippines has become one of the countries in the ASEAN and Asian regions that maintain a high level for the longest time. From 2020 to 2023, the average GDP growth rate of the Philippines was 6.4%.Many local residents have given high praise to Duterte's governance:
"Under his rule, the social order in the Philippines has gradually improved, the economy and people's livelihood have been gradually improved, and he has also created a peaceful external development environment for the Philippines..."
However, with the traditional "pro-American" political family of Marcos Jr. taking office and starting to make trouble in the South China Sea again, Sino-Philippine relations have deteriorated sharply, and the Philippine economy has once again become unstable.
In the first four months of this year, the bilateral trade volume between China and the Philippines decreased by 10.3% year-on-year. During the same period, the overall trade volume between China and ASEAN countries increased by 4.8%.
The most significant is that in the first four months of this year, the number of bananas exported from the Philippines to China decreased by 1/3, and China's largest banana import source changed from the Philippines to Vietnam.
The Philippine government initially set the economic growth target for 2024 at 6.5% to 7.5%. In the first quarter of this year, the Philippines' Gross Domestic Product (GDP) only grew by 5.7% year-on-year, lower than the annual growth target set by the government.
Marcos Jr.'s plan is to pin the hopes of the Philippines on the powerful United States, calling on the United States and its allies to increase trade and investment in the Philippines.
Unfortunately, the United States has never been a "philanthropist," let alone an omnipotent "savior." Currently, the United States is in a dire situation with inflation and interest rate hikes, unable to take care of itself.
Historically, the United States has even severely harmed the Philippines.
Duterte has also expressed dissatisfaction with the current foreign policy of the Philippines on several occasions, stating that the resurgence of waves in the South China Sea has made him feel sad.He said: "The United States occupied our country after the Spanish, but told the Filipino people that it was a good thing for us, which is simply nonsense."
Turning Enemies into Friends
In fact, the United States is the true "enemy" of the Philippines.
In 1565, with a well-trained and well-equipped army, Spain defeated the indigenous Filipino forces, and the Philippines became a Spanish colony.
However, during the 300 years since the Spanish invasion, the Filipinos never gave up various resistance struggles, with an average of 5 uprisings per year and as many as 102 larger-scale uprisings.
Then, the United States suddenly extended a helping hand, assisting the Filipino insurgents to completely drive out the Spanish colonizers.
By 1898, except for Manila and some areas in the south, the Filipino forces had liberated almost all territories and issued a declaration of independence in Cavite, proclaiming the independence of the Philippines.
But the United States, which had long coveted the Philippines, was not so kind-hearted. At this time, the U.S. military began to obstruct the Filipino forces from recapturing Manila and secretly reached an agreement with the Spanish governor, transferring Manila to the United States.
The Filipinos, who had thought they could become the masters of their own house after driving out the Spanish, did not expect that they would be rid of the wolf at the front door only to let in a tiger at the back door. Thereafter, with the United States' large-scale invasion of the Philippines, the defeated Philippines fell into a trap and became a U.S. colony.
However, facing the duplicitous Americans, the Filipinos never swallowed their pride. From 1903 to 1908, the Philippines erupted in more than 50 major armed uprisings, with the emergence of nearly 390 anti-American organizations.Despite repeated defeats and massacres, the Filipinos were not deterred, ultimately forcing the Americans to make concessions. In 1946, the United States signed the Manila Treaty with the Philippines, agreeing to the country's independence, and the Philippines gained full sovereignty.
One might expect that after gaining independence, there would still be some estrangement between the U.S. and the Philippines due to historical issues. However, no one could have anticipated that under the continuous economic support from the U.S., the Philippines was nurtured into a "pro-American" entity.
As the long-term colonial occupier of the Philippines, the U.S. not only plundered a large amount of raw materials but also invested considerable effort into the country's development. On one hand, it implanted American concepts and values among the populace; on the other hand, it fully transplanted the American system and institutions. At the same time, it worked hard to transform the Philippines into an important industrial base for the U.S.
With the support of American capital, the Philippines quickly established a comprehensive financial insurance, manufacturing, transportation, and international trade sectors, and secured a large number of orders from the Korean and Vietnam Wars, leading to rapid economic development.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, in the context of Asia, Manila, the capital of the Philippines, was the only international city that could compete with Tokyo, Japan, attracting a large workforce from Hong Kong, Vietnam, and South Korea to seek their fortunes.
In 1969, the Philippines' per capita GDP reached $262, second only to Japan in Asia. The capital, Manila, was hailed as the "Little New York of the East" due to its prosperity.
Seeing the wealth of the Philippines, it naturally became a "template" for the Americans to promote themselves. In the words of the Americans, "Any country as poor as the Philippines, if it adopts the American system and believes in 'American democracy', can immediately become a developed country."Little did they know, although the Philippines is wealthy, its economic independence is extremely poor, and the so-called economic achievements are almost entirely due to the support of the United States.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, U.S.-Philippine trade accounted for only about 10% of the Philippines' total foreign trade, and later it once rose to 70%. This means that the Philippines does not have a strong self-sustaining ability.
During the decades of being "blessed" by the United States, Filipinos were content to be the agricultural base for the United States, processing various industries thrown over by the United States. Such good times did not continue indefinitely.
Countless Filipino domestic workers have supported the "half of the sky" of the economy.
Since the 1960s, Asian countries have successively started economic reforms, from South Korea's Han River Miracle, to China's reform and opening up, and even Vietnam and Laos have successively started reforms, external competition has accelerated the decline of the Philippines.
As more and more countries efficiently promote the construction of their own industrial and agricultural systems, achieving independent and healthy development, becoming more vibrant emerging countries, international capital has shifted to countries with lower costs and greater stability.
The Philippines, which is content to be a factory for the United States, has not established a mature industrial system, mainly relying on agricultural products and resource exports, has ushered in an economic downturn.
When U.S. orders are no longer as surging as before, U.S. capital continues to flow into other countries, and since the 1980s, the domestic economy of the Philippines has continued to fluctuate, and unemployed workers and farmers have taken to the streets to demonstrate.
The former president of the Philippines, the father of the current president of the Philippines, Marcos, is also known for corruption.
This president has a nickname called "Mr. 10%".In the Philippines, any venture, investment, business, or even financial expenditure had to give him 10%, otherwise, it would not be possible to succeed. He took no less than 10 billion US dollars from the Philippines, causing the country, which originally had no foreign debt, to accumulate a foreign debt of 26.5 billion US dollars. His deeds were rated by the Guinness World Records as "the largest government corruption case in history".
During Marcos's reign, the employment rate was low, and there was great public resentment. To divert the contradiction and reduce the unemployment rate, he proposed a method to increase the income of the people - sending workers abroad.
Later, countless Filipino domestic helpers supported the "half of the sky" of the Philippines' foreign exchange income and became the main economic pillar of the country. Among the approximately 100 million population of the Philippines, about 12 million Filipinos live abroad for a long time. These people contribute about 10% of the Philippines' economic output every year just by remittances from abroad.
In the Philippines, they are called "heroes of the times" and "national heroes". In the world's domestic service industry, "Filipino domestic helpers" are also well-known. However, behind the "hero" halo is the shadow.
Overseas migrant workers often face the same work but different pay, nowhere to complain, and even beating, abuse, and murder by bad employers. In February 2018, the Kuwaiti police received a report that a body covered with injuries was found in a refrigerator in an empty house. The victim was a 29-year-old Filipino migrant worker.
Over the years, the Philippines, which has hoped to send workers abroad, has not truly developed and has become worse and worse internationally.According to the "2023 World Competitiveness Yearbook," in the Asia-Pacific region, the Philippines has been ranked 13th or second to last among 14 economies for the sixth consecutive year.
As the waves in the South China Sea rise again, the Belt and Road Initiative projects in the Philippines have been slowed down. Duterte also left a meaningful sentence:
"I don't think the United States would fight for us to the death. The U.S. foreign policy, if viewed from a long-term perspective, is really full of hostility."
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