BEIJING\u2014Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s effusive message of friendship on his visit to Beijing this week has handed China a public relations bonanza just three months after Beijing suffered a humiliating defeat at an international tribunal.<\/p>\n
The state-owned Chinese media that sought to portray Duterte’s predecessor and the arbitration panel as American puppets this summer have now rolled out what Chinese media scholars describe as a rare welcome for the Philippine president, who this week downplayed his country’s dispute with Beijing over South China Sea territory.<\/p>\n
But the overtures have drawn criticism of Duterte at home in the Philippines, where the public is wary of taking a deferential attitude to a country regarded as a bully.<\/p>\n
As his visit unfolded this week, Chinese state media aired a series of interviews in which Duterte \u2014 who has repeatedly voiced strident criticism of the United States \u2014 lavished his Chinese hosts with conciliatory words and pleaded earnestly for economic aid.<\/p>\n
Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, said he has rarely seen a state visit accompanied by so many interviews from state media.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe visit has strategic significance and China wants to express its welcome, but Duterte also has a message to convey and he’s willing to give that same message to different Chinese outlets over and over,\u201d Zhan said. \u201cIn the years I’ve followed the Chinese media I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a 12-minute China Central Television interview broadcast Wednesday, Duterte cast the two countries as bound as brothers by the South China Sea and mentioned his own Chinese ancestry \u2014 his grandfather was an immigrant from Xiamen province \u2014 which, he said, explains his personal sincerity. Developing his country’s economy was more important than exacerbating tensions with China over the South China Sea, as other U.S.-backed Southeast Asian neighbours would have him do, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey say that all the nations would weigh in by my side, (but) I said it is close to a third world war,\u201d he told CCTV. \u201cWhat would be my point in insisting on the ownership of that body of water when the world is exploding?\u201d<\/p>\n
Someday, he added, the South China Sea will just be known as the China Sea. \u201cOne hundred years from now, it’s really meaningless,\u201d he said. \u201cThe oceans cannot feed us all. Your fish is my fish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later Wednesday, speaking to reporters in Beijing, Duterte said he would not discuss the South China Sea issue unless Chinese President Xi Jinping raised it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a matter of courtesy and in the Oriental way, you always wait, because I am a visitor, I can’t destroy the goodwill by just blurting out something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There was plenty of apparent goodwill spilling forth from Chinese state television and off its official newspaper’s editorial pages.<\/p>\n
During the interview segment, veteran CCTV correspondent Shui Junyi narrated Duterte’s rise as a political leader of conviction who fought against crime and drugs as mayor of Davao but has suffered Western criticism for human rights abuses.<\/p>\n
Duterte outlined his wish list of help from Beijing, led first by his hope that China would include the Philippines in the Asian giant’s massive Silk Road economic project. Shui responded: \u201cWe never forget you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also said he hoped for a railroad, if China could \u201cfind it in your heart to give it to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Duterte’s posture in China has been met with skepticism back home. Although his supporters have cheered his diplomatic pivot away from the United States on social media, the country’s major media outlets have questioned his remarks in China, said Richard Heydarian, a professor of political science at De La Salle University in Manila.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mainstream media is saying it doesn’t sound right to be so deferential to the very country that has occupied Philippine territory, and that has provided negligible aid during Typhoon Haiyan,\u201d said Heydarian. \u201cNow he’s popular enough to shape public sentiment and ameliorate opponents, but that’s not guaranteed a year from now. He’s lucky this is his honeymoon period.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who brought the triumphant arbitration case against China, said his country’s foreign policy should not cast aside a longtime ally \u2014 the United States \u2014 and favour another state, referring to China.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has recently been perceived that our foreign policy had seemingly gone off-track,\u201d del Rosario said in Manila on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Heydarian said Duterte’s performance in China has been carefully calibrated to gain deals that the Philippine economy needs. \u201cThe first time I saw him on CCTV I was shocked,\u201d Heydarian said. \u201cBut this is a measured, Machiavellian, pragmatic leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of the CCTV interview segment, Duterte told his interviewer that he wanted to deliver a closing message to the people of China and to its leaders who had granted him \u201cpermission\u201d to visit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m going there in friendship, to extend my hand in warm brotherhood and also to ask for help,\u201d Duterte said, turning to face the camera directly. \u201cI must be frank, I must be honest enough to say that we need your help.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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