THE PANATAG SHOAL SITUATION

What will be the result of the chinese taking over of a peripheral territory like Panatag Shoal to us filipinos in the future? 

Yet today, have we ever been alarmed by the fact that as of 2007, between 80,000 to 100,000 chinese have already been moving covertly inside our main homeland?  These do not include those who have already gained access to having legalized their status.  They have been able to continue taking over of our banking system, building construction system, rice distribution system, real estate development, airline industry, retail industry, etc..  They have been rendering us impotent in solving the chronic rice shortage for decades.  Henry Sy, Lucio Tan, including Danding Cojuangco, have been able to continue unchecked in displacing us filipinos of access to our own economic resources and control of our development.  Now they have been taking over development of our education thru Asia Pacific College, UE, Centro Escolar University, etc.?  What has been the result?

They have developed a situation where in our military, police, and political officials have been locked in under their social and economic influence to provide them protection and access to having legal status of control of our resources and development.

Lives of millions of us, filipino families have already been damaged caused by our having been displaced from access to economic resources and by their destruction of environment as a result of whatever mode of their operations to gain huge profits. We have been so unable to have access to our very own rich resources that while the chinese are gaining strength here and are the ones enjoying such resources, we are forced to leave our own country to work or migrate abroad and have our human resources benefit foreign countries

Compare this with the status of development of nations whose people are the ones in control of their own development like the israelis, french, germans, vietnamese, australians, and the japanese today.  How is the direction of their economic, political, defense, and educational development compared to that of ours?   Compare this with the defense system of these nations who are able to sustain and protect their own people.

Compare our developmental status today with that of ours when we were a newly born nation in 1898 up to the early 1900s when our national identity and our control of our political, economic, defense and educational system was still strong even when they were being wrested away from us by the most powerful nation in the world- the north americans of the United States.  Inspite of our being a newly born nation then, the invading forces of the U.S. were unable to catch, lock and control our defense system for years until they resorted to massive hostage taking and extermination of the civilians among us. 

Despite of these, our moves were still instructed by our organic national developmental code we inherited from the fathers of our nation.

The Father of the Philippine Army, Gen Artemio Ricarte and hero in the Filipino-American War, "...envisioned...the country divided into twelve 'confederate states', the islands of Guam included as well as Jolo 'and its adjacent islands'.  Manila, as soon as seized from the Americans, would be the federal capital; the official language would be Spanish; the death penalty and all prisoners would be abolished; the Chinese would be barred from business and banking;..."

We also inherited the code of Jose Rizal.  In 1895, while he was in exile in Dapitan in Mindanao, in the southern Philippines. Rizal was filled with righteous indignation at the “exploitation” of the natives by the Chinese traders, and appealed to the local residents to boycott the Chinese shops.  He also opened a small sari-sari store to compete against the Chinese.  (Wickberg, E. The Chinese in Philippine Life 1850-1898).  Nick Joaquin said: “And because Chinese financiers had a stranglehold on native agriculture, Rizal set up the Cooperative Association of Dapitan Farmers, a pioneer in economic nationalism…”

Compare our alarm level over the chinese in the Philippines today compared to that of ours in the 1900s when we conducted defense actions mostly at the developmental level against the chinese creeping invasion.  Unfortunately, the chinese government provided support in complement with the US government dismantling of the defense set-up we have established against the chinese invasion here and their taking over of our economy.

If even our fathers and heroes who were alarmed by the chinese creeping invasion of our nation already in the very centers of control of our development in our main homeland which stimulated an appropriate response of resistance then are not anymore stimulating any response from us today,  why should a chinese invasion of our peripheral territory like the Panatag Shoal stimulate an alarming response from us?

Before we get alarmed with the invasion of our peripheral territories in the near future, let us review our present situation today and examine if the chinese has not already applied to us today what the famous Chinese General Sun Tzu said something like, “Therefore, the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.”

It is the chinese invasion along our border like Spratly Islands that we get excited and scramble to engage them in heroic combat just like in Hollywood.  Yet we cannot even check our main homeland here with its rich natural resources and centers of control of our development already being overrun by the chinese.

If ever we have to commit lives for our fatherland, whose lives will we commit?  Then, let it be commited for a reason based not on Hollywood, but on our real situation and needs.We should not be manipulated into engaging a physical military confrontation with the chinese just because of their invasion of our peripheral territories like Spratly Islands or Panatag Shoal.  What benefit will this give us?

This will only give the north americans of the United States an even stronger justification and on whom we filipinos perceive to be our savior, for an even increase in extent and intensity of their presence here.  This will give them an excuse being a perceived ally of the Philippines, to engage China in a military confrontation for an opportunity to reduce the threat of a looming takeover from the U.S., world military dominance.  This seems inevitable as China is already overtaking U.S.A. from world economic dominance.

If ever we have to sacrifice lives for our fatherland, let it not be ours but those of who are invading our land and displacing us filipinos from our source of sustenance and control of development of our nation.