(Preston Parra, Headline USA) Newly-elected Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of former President Ferdinand Marcos, seems to be using his position to cozy up to China, according to Bloomberg.
In response to Marcos’s recent overtures signaling a strategic partnership with China on military and economic matters, the Japan Forward news outlet released an editorial that read in part, “If the Philippines continues the current administration’s strategy of giving priority to the perceived economic benefits from appeasing China, that would be extremely dangerous.”
Marcos Sr. was very close with China as well, bowing down to Chinese demands anytime orders were relayed to the tiny island nation from the massive jaws of Mao Zedong’s Chinese empire.
His nearly two-decade presidency, spanning the mid-1960s to the mid-’80s, was notorious for its corruption. Following a populist color revolution, he was ultimately deposed in 1986, and he was sent into exile for the remaining three years of his life.
After years of seeing Western influence regain a foothold in the former US territory (which became an independent republic in 1946 after being liberated from Japanese control) an uneasy relationship first began to emerge between former Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte and his American counterpart, Barack Obama.
While Obama’s successor, former President Donald Trump, was able to heal the rift somewhat, the Biden administration now appears to have driven the Philippines back into the eager and waiting arms of China’s Xi Jinping.
It comes as China has grown increasingly aggressive in its efforts to shore up influence among the islands of the South Pacific, a potential staging ground of any military conflict with the United States if a territorial dispute over Taiwan emerges.
Not only does Marcos Jr. seem open to the possibility of improving diplomatic relations with China, however, he suggested taking the two countries’ ties even farther.
“Let’s add to that: let’s have cultural exchanges, educational exchanges, even military, if that will be useful,” the Philippine leader said, according to Bloomberg.
The tactics being deployed by China in the South China Sea bear similarities with those used by the Russians for years leading up to their recent invasion of Ukraine, according to Reuters.
U.S. and other pro-Western officials are now scrambling to head off a possible Chinese land-grab, even citing the 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which called China’s claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea to lack legal basis entirely, reported ABC News.
But unlike Ukraine, which has fought off its violent occupation with billions of dollars in U.S. military and financial support, the jewel in the crown of Southeast Asia’s island nations might instead roll out the red carpet for its communist overlords.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
