CHINA´S BID TO INFLUENCE THE PHILIPPINES HEATS UP / THE ECONOMIST

Mapped, monitored and manipulated

China’s bid to influence the Philippines heats up

Its tactics move from sea to land

Illustration of the silhouettes of 2 young men, one on a moped and one standing, they're in front of the fence of a military base. The standing man is taking a photo of a fighter jet taking off, the one on the moped is on his phone. / Illustration: Daniel Stolle

They came bearing gifts—cash for poverty-relief schemes and shiny motorbikes for police officers. 

But the Chinese ingratiating themselves with Philippine officials were also mapping military bases, snapping coastguard vessels and surveying power plants. 

Since January the Philippines has arrested more than a dozen Chinese nationals and alleged Filipino accomplices on charges of espionage. 

The arrests point to operations that blur the line between influence-peddling and spying.

The arrests suggest a new front in China’s long campaign to press the Philippines, America’s oldest military ally in South-East Asia, to come into the Chinese orbit. 

For years, confrontation has played out on the South China Sea, where maritime disputes have escalated. 

China has occupied shoals within Philippine waters, blocked resupply vessels, rammed patrol boats and harassed Philippine fishermen. 

A year ago a Chinese coastguard crew armed with staves and axes boarded small naval boats, severing a Filipino sailor’s thumb. 

Chinese surveillance over the sea, deploying coastguard and maritime militia vessels, drones, satellites and patrol aircraft, is still growing. 

On July 1st China banned Francis Tolentino, who has just stepped down as the Philippines’ Senate majority leader, for proposing bills to delineate his country’s maritime claims: China fumes that he has harmed its interests and undermined relations.

Now China is trying new ways to gain sway in the Philippines that include spying, bribery and putting pressure on Filipinos of Chinese descent, who number in the millions. 

It has forced a local reckoning. 

The Philippines, says Gilbert Teodoro junior, the defence secretary, “is a naturally hospitable country…a trusting country”. 

But since the Chinese authorities have chosen to abuse that trust, “now we’re having to disrupt their operations”.

Chinese influence operations are not unique to the Philippines. 

China’s Communist Party has long sought to shape elite opinion in other countries and gain back-door access to key organisations, often through the party’s United Front Work Department, a murky entity tasked with building authority abroad, especially among ethnic Chinese. 

In Australia and America this approach has included attempts to get advanced technology and to stifle voices critical of the party’s repression of Uyghurs, Tibetans and democratic Hong Kongers.

In the Philippines, by contrast, the goal has much to do with the country’s strategic geography, says Mr Teodoro. 

Its archipelago lies at the heart of what naval strategists call the “first island chain”, running from the Kuril islands north of Japan to the Malay peninsula. 

Sitting so close to Taiwan and overlooking a key channel into the western Pacific, the Philippines is vital to America’s efforts to contain China. 

The Philippines’ closest ties are with America and its allies, such as Japan, in Asia.

Three clusters of arrests have taken place this year. 

In January Deng Yuanqing, a Chinese national from the Army Engineering University under the People’s Liberation Army, was arrested with two Filipinos. 

They were accused of scouting military bases used by American troops in a defence arrangement known as the Enhanced Defence Co-operation Agreement (EDCA), as well as checking out gas fields, lighthouses and petrochemical plants. 

Soon after, five men allegedly linked to Mr Deng were arrested for flying drones to snoop on the Philippine navy. 

Two Chinese nationals and three Filipinos were caught driving through Manila near sensitive sites in the capital, including the presidential palace and the American embassy. 

They were allegedly using an “IMSI-catcher”, a device that mimics mobile towers to intercept data. 

They harvested thousands of communications before their arrest, according to the country’s detective agency.

It is not clear which parts of the Chinese state might commission such spying. 

Indeed, says Jay Batongbacal of the University of the Philippines, these cases, if proven, may be instances of “crowd-sourced espionage”. 

Those arrested appear to have been sloppy and conspicuous. 

Rather than working for the party, they may have gathered information off their own bat—for money, or hoping to curry favour with Chinese authority.

To be sure, state-sponsored Chinese bodies take aim at the Philippines. 

Over several years, Chinese hackers have targeted government agencies, including the president’s office. 

Among other things, they have stolen sensitive military data to do with the disputes in the South China Sea, according to Bloomberg, a news agency. 

Last year a number of mysterious underwater drones were discovered, which Philippine officials said were Chinese-made, probably used for reconnaissance.

Yet spying is only part of the strategy. China has quietly forged local links. 

Local governments are especially susceptible to economic inducement and bribery, notes Rommel Ong, a retired rear admiral. 

Until recently, they could strike deals with foreign actors without central oversight—an opportunity China exploited.

Sisterly love

Consider the provinces of Palawan and Cagayan. 

Both sit in strategic spots: Palawan faces the South China Sea; Cagayan is less than 100km from Taiwan. 

Both host EDCA bases, have Chinese sister cities and maintain strong economic links to China. 

While Japan, Taiwan and others also have sister cities in the Philippines, China has turned such arrangements from cultural niceties into strategic footholds, says Aries Arugay of the University of the Philippines.

Cagayan is typical. Its former governor, Manuel Mamba, opposed the opening of new EDCA sites and is critical of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos’s hawkish policy towards China. 

The two newest EDCA sites are within the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA), where Chinese firms predominate. 

Since 2011, CEZA has attracted $140m in foreign capital, mostly from China. 

Economic dependence creates a dilemma. 

In April General Romeo Brawner, chief of staff of the armed forces, warned that “if something happens in Taiwan, inevitably we will be involved.” 

In such a scenario, it is not clear how local leaders like Mr Mamba (whose hometown has also benefited from a China-funded irrigation project) would respond.

Beyond working at a local level in the Philippines, China has long cultivated links with Filipinos whose ancestors emigrated from China. 

The Communist Party is “favourably disposed” to work with people with strong ties to mainland China, according to AidData, a research group at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. 

Connections can be used as leverage.

Baby Ruth Villarama, a film-maker, experienced this first-hand. 

She directed “Food Delivery”, a documentary about Filipino fishermen facing Chinese obstruction in the South China Sea. 

The premiere was scheduled for a film festival in March that was sponsored by Puregold, a Filipino-Chinese conglomerate that runs supermarkets selling low-cost products in bulk, some made in China. 

“Food Delivery” was pulled two days before its debut. 

The suspicion, says Dr Batongbacal, is that the Chinese embassy applied pressure. 

As China’s influence expands across the Philippines, from local governments to cultural institutions, more Filipinos may discover that speaking out, if China has anything to do with it, comes at a cost.