On Reflection | China-Philippines ‘hit and run’: Duterte’s downplaying of the incident is sign of his Beijing dilemma
- When a Chinese vessel allegedly hit and sunk a Philippine ship, the reaction from the Southeast Asian nation was swift – but then it began to waver
- On top of this, the president’s soft response is a sign of difficulty getting support for friendly relations with Beijing, writes Richard Heydarian
“I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep,” Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the legendary Napoleonic-era diplomat, once admitted.
A direct witness to Napoleon Bonaparte’s audacious military expeditions, which turned France from a besieged revolutionary state into an intercontinental empire, he potently realised the power of leadership in times of crisis.
The normally tough-talking Filipino leader is now caught between the rock of calibrating his diplomatic response to avoid tensions with Beijing on one hand, and a harder place of risking all-out political backlash at home on the other.
Duterte’s strategic dilemma was fully on display through his days-long silence as well as confused responses by various government officials.
On June 9, marking Philippine-China Friendship Day, a Chinese vessel allegedly hit and sunk Philippine vessel F/B GIMVER 1, then abandoned its 22 seamen on the high seas. The incident took place in the Reed Bank, an energy-rich area within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and China’s nine-dash line.
