Indeed, the Chinese know how thing “work” in the Philippines. They have, after all, been prominent figures in Philippine industry since the Middle Ages. They know enough to fly above the radars of the natives and deal directly with the powers-that-be. That strategy of knowing and dealing with the right people continues to this day.
Public opinion does not sway Chinese business. After all, public opinion ultimately does not matter. What matters is what the powerful decide. The Chinese have built entire fortunes just on that simple principle. Indeed, opinion is the only thing the Filipino masses actually contribute to the way things are run in the Philippines. Unfortunately that opinion matters only to elected officials. Powerful people who do not owe their power to public opinion need not be swayed by it. In fact, such people actually have the power to influence, even control, public opinion.
Think of the two most influential industries in the Philippines — the media and retail. Filipinos worship the channels and edifices of these industries. Because these industries are in the business of producing, selling, and delivering experiences, they enjoy a direct conduit into Filipinos’ heads. It is not even worth mentioning that Big Corporate Media through schlock hit products like Eat Bulaga and the phenomenal Aldub franchise are virtual deities in Philippine society. If media are the gods, big mall operators like the SM Group provide heaven to Filipinos in the airconditioned cities they are building all over the country. Indeed, these “heavens” now host the Catholic masses that have since been bumped down to a distant Third Place in the hierarchy of Filipinos’ favourite pastimes.
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Does China and the Greater China composed of its disaspora all over the world need to concern itself with public opinion?
That’s, quite simply, a no-brainer.
They just go straight to the top and bypass everyone from the bottom-feeders up to the merely-affluent middlemen.
Filipino ‘activism’ will not move China. Only money will.
The trouble with Filipinos is that they suffer minds conditioned by several decades of emo democracy porn. Their sacred notion of “people power” belies their dismal understanding of where real power comes from. Real power does not come from the people. It comes from capital. China is proof that democracy is not needed to be successful capitalists and that Western liberal societies no longer have a monopoly over imperialist capital expansion. Indeed, China is applying a strategy that a gentrified-beyond-all-recognition Europe had long forgotten — that truly awesome economic expansion can be achieved by seizing and holding a captured market of consumers.
It’s really nothing personal. It’s just business.
The pathetic “activism” of Filipinos will not save them. What will save them is a resolve to compete — even if that means competing on an uneven field. Indeed, for that matter, there is no such thing as a “level playing field”. That notion is a construct of people held back by a debilitating brain disease called victim mentality. Life’s not fair and to feel entitled to “fair” treatment is an absolute set-up for failure. Ultimately it is up to Filipinos to decide how they want to play in the uneven playing field that is life. Keep relying on their “activists” to whine about “unfairness”. Or get out there and compete.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Personally, I suspect it’s too late for Filipinos to do anything at all about Chinese expansionism into the Philippines. As you suggested, the Chinese don’t need to invade with tanks and guns. They can just buy the place. No, wait – they don’t even have to do that; they just get the natives to sell themselves as slaves.
Pragmatic indeed.
I imagine the Chinese Plan for the Philippines ultimately involves a takeover of its territory as lebensraum for the Han people, but by the time that happens, the locals will be compliant.
That’s the art of war for you.
Indeed, I think the root of Filipino chronic impoverishment is this “willingness” to be slaves. You see it in this addiction to OFW money (family sacrificed at the altar of remittance cash for celphone load). And rather than develop domestic world-class brands, Filipinos would rather consume foreign imports. Everything about how Filipinos participate in the global economy is on the wrong side of this economic equation, basically.
Right. Filipinos are “oppressed” because on some level they want to be. It’s what they’re comfortable with. Life might be unpleasant in some ways when you’re a slave, but at least it’s predictable, and you have some measure of security.
Only that northern part of the Philippines the Chinese called a long long time ago, Liu Sung or the name might refer also to the whole archipelago, who knows.
The oppositions are not anti-capitalism, because they do not know anything about capitalism, they just hate Duterte, that’s all.
The Chinese are natural business people. They had traded with the ancient Egyptian Empire, and other empires, since time immemorial. They had the “Silk Road”, that carried caravans of goods to the Middle East. They traded with ancient Filipinos, before the coming of the Spanish colonizers.
They had , a notorious pirate, named : Li Ma Jong, who robbed the Chinese trading ships, carrying their goods to Asia… Li Ma Jong, hid in the northern part of the Philipines, until his death.
In business, it is common sense, and quality and low priced goods that matter. Innovation plays a lot, to be on forefront of your competitors. To invent a needed product, and sell it at affordable price, is the best in business…
This was the reason, I called Filipino manufactures, to improve the design of their products; improve their systems of manufacturing; and implement Quality Control, and Quality Assurance.
Learn also the “tricks of the trade”…this is the most important.
Encouraging “activists” to rally in the streets, to protect your lousy products will not do anything to your business !
That is what the caveMoros, caveSpanish, caveJapanese, and caveAmericans cannot relate. The enlightened Chinese need not invade, they just do their own business.
FILIPINOS ARE OWNED BY CHINESE not counting the left-behind Spanish colonists …
The top 10 richest in Philippines are:
Henry Sy; US$18.3 billion
Manuel Villar; $5 billion
John Gokongwei Jr.; $4.4 billion
Jaime Zobel de Ayala; $4 billion
Enrique Razon Jr.; $3.9 billion
Tony Tan Caktiong; $3.85 billion
Lucio Tan; $3.8 billion
Ramon Ang; $2.85 billion
George Ty; $2.75 billion
Andrew Tan; $2.6 billion
FORBES PHILIPPINES 50 RICHEST LIST
https://www.forbes.com/philippines-billionaires/list/#tab:overall
So University of the Philippines graduate should know and their communist cohorts …. PHILIPPINES IS NOT OWNED BY FILIPINOS …. NEVER WAS … IT NEVER IS … IT NEVER WILL BE …. If you Filipinos believe your textbooks cranked out by U.P. historians … WELL, IT IS BECAUSE YOU FILIPINOS DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH BRAIN TO SIFT THRU WHAT IS TRUE AND WHAT IS FALSE ….
Philippines WAS OWNED NOT BY THE INDIOS BUT BY CHINESE and FERDINAND-COME-LATELY COLONISTS …..
FILIPINOS ARE CURSED PEOPLE … do not fight it …. admit it …..
SO, YOU ASK, WHERE ARE THE FILIPINOS? The Filipinos, those brown ones, have their own list and they appear here:
https://www.infoplease.com/world/political-statistics/worlds-ten-most-corrupt-leaders1
Ferdinand Marcos is one of them …. Estrada is the other …. and of course that is THE WORLD’S CROOKED CORRUPT LEADERS …. If you narrow it down to the most richest crooked corrupt dishonest in the Philippines you will see the top ten list are graduates from University of the Philippines ….
regardless … the government is educating more U.P. students major in crookery …. AND RAPPLER IS SOOOOO QUIET TO PUBLISH WHAT SCHOOL THE CROOKS AND TRANNIES ARE COMING FROM …. BECAUSE RAPPLER IS FROM UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES, TOO !!!!!
AHA! HA! HA! HA!
these so-called “greedy” entrepreneurs employ Filipinos
who earn a living that support families
and contribute to stable Phil economic growth
CHINESE ARE NATURALLY BRILLIANT PEOPLE. Let’s admit it. Compare CHINATOWN vs FILIPINOTOWN in the U.S. Compare KOREATOWN vs FILIPINOTOWN vs CHINATOWN.
There are plenty of hard-of-English Chinese working in Google campuses and Microsoft so are in nuclear research facilities in Armagordo and NASA. Well, I saw Filipinos there … according to my brown-skin Pinay GF, Filipinos are floor managers …. THEY MOP THE FLOORS !!!
I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH HER … I do not see Filipinos there at all except in accounting when I get my checks …
LET US GET DOWN TO LOOKS … Filipinos do not age well compared to Koreans, Japanese and Chinese. When Filipinos age they look dated, gnarled, wrinkled and stressed-out-looks. I, for one, is afraid of Filipinos. They look mean. I do not know if they do it intentionally or just genetics BUT THEY DO MEAN AND BRUTE. They smoke. They laugh out loud. They hang-out in groups of old mean cranky people.
My Pinay GF quarreled over them because she likes to grocery shop at Filipino stores … I DO NOT …
“Gnarled”. Lol!
“Public opinion does not sway Chinese business. After all, public opinion ultimately does not matter. What matters is what the powerful decide.” — very, very true.
CHINESE KNOWS HOW TO WORK FILIPINOS … meaning, how to corrupt Filipinos … how to work their way thru Filipinos permeable fragile honesty … and their instant search for wealth … without trying hard … Chinese knows …
Capital as a form of power isn’t very reliable. Consent is the underlying source of control.
We’ve been invaded so many times. We probably should fix our own internal problems first.
” Sometimes, working with what you have, rather than surrendering to cynicism, is the only strategy.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/opinion/midterm-election-hacked.html
Perhaps. But then one can argue that “consent” is also something being gamed by the powers-that-be.
The Chinese are good at playing their game. Pinoys have to up theirs
In other words, compete.
The ones who game consent might be limited in themselves because it’s an unsustainable strategy.
It’s not a level playing field but we still have to share the same space. Those who are ahead could at least take a constructive role. If something is failing on a large scale, then it’s operating on a self-defeating premise. It wouldn’t have a path for real progress.
Upon reading this article, I suddenly remembered the novel “Rising Sun” by the late Michael Crichton, who is also the author and creator of Jurrasic Park, which spawned into a film series and yet, the said novel turned into a film starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. “Rising Sun” is not just a detective/murder mystery novel but it deals with the controversial subject of Japanese-American relations, especially on the business side and corporate culture, and the difference between Japanese and American mindsets.
What strikes me is the afterword about what should be the American response to Japan, as the latter being a leading industrial nation. During those times Americans kept on blaming Japan for their success and their behavior, yet the Japanese called it as ‘childish whining’. The Americans want the Japanese to do things the American way, but what made the Japanese as corporate competitors is they did thing their own way and they succeeded.
With this kind of situation, imagine the Chinese will call this pathetic activism as ‘childish whining’; no wonder why China called the Philippines as “a basketcase of wasted democracy” 8 years ago. Unfortunately, the current economic system we have is preventing us to compete economically. I remember that Japan had a protectionist economy, but they were able to compete. China allowed themselves to compete because they opened their economy. So yeah, the best response is making business and to compete, not activism.
Indeed, globalisation favours producers — societies and economies that are able to make stuff that the rest of the world is willing to pay good money for. The idea that globalisation is good for the Third World because it opens up the market to competition and downward pressure on prices as a result is just an illusion. Over the long run, open markets wreak havoc in societies with weak industrial traditions.
I’d say there’s a bit more to it than that. In any trade – whether it’s between nations or between next-door neighbours – the key to success is balance, surely. One cannot be ONLY a producer, or ONLY a consumer. A village potter, for example, must at least consume clay in order to produce his output.
The problem in the Philippines is that producers are prevented from consuming foreign goods: while in some future (hypothetical) Philippines there might be a local producer of top-quality clay that local potters can use to make top-quality products, right now, no such thing exists. This wouldn’t be a problem if he were allowed to buy raw materials from abroad, but he isn’t. The BOC blocks everything of any importance. One cannot bring in machine tools, vehicles, industrial parts and materials, or indeed anything other than consumer dross without paying heavy import duties and dealing with a world of bureaucratic pain. Life is too short, for most people, to deal with that sort of nonsense.
There is, therefore, no way to jumpstart the process of development.
And this is 100% intentional. Stupid people who think of nothing but telenovelas and cellphones are easy to manipulate at the voting booth.
Marius,
What is the problem with China? Like any or like most countries, one country does not have all the raw-materials to make/produce certain products. To make/produce/manufacture a smart phone you need some ingredients that a certain country may not have on/in his own soil. And that is exactly what China is doing now. Expanding its “business” by building bridges and roads in ‘poor’/’poorer’ foreign countries so that in return its certain it will get that silver that it needs to manufacture smart phones.
And at the same time, China has that foreign country in its pockets also politically. So that foreign country – eventually – will lose its souvereignity.
Sharing the burden of social discomfort is not simply a matter of helping someone else feel good. It’s about leveling the playing field in pursuit of nurturing individual and collective potential.
Beyond all those capitalists plethora lies a sorry state of chinese business imperialism. For one thing, they have no reputation they can be proud of. They are known for scheming a lot of things. Like imitating quality products into substandard products. Even go beyond polluting consumers with poisonous goods just to earn profit with their cheap and disposable goods. They are also known by hacking protected intellectual properties of others to improve their sorry state.
If there is a business spoiler in global market, it should be the chinese who will get the award. They wreck havoc on global market with cheap products and targeted poor consumers of third world countries. They are competing schemingly with the accepted global quality standard that assures excellent quality and justifiable prices of products like that of Japan and United States over their own version of poor quality and very affordable appealing but hazardous goods and services to third world consumers.
They are known pirate businessmen in the world. They will pirate those weak and poor countries with appealing offers but if those latter will not be careful, will take multiple exchange of value in return just like how those victim countries who are gullible to believe them in Asia, Oceania and South America. Maybe Philippines will come next as the president is very cozy with Chinese and accepted multiple loans already with high interest rates to augment infra budget “projects” with its “build, build build program”. Most likely Philippines will get bankrupt if these infra projects would not get good profit in return for the Philippines. No wonder PM of Malaysia Mahathir scraps loans from China because he knew well his country cannot be able to pay the loan with high interest rates from China eventhough it will develop its country’s infra.
Chinese are also known for violators of international laws in which they are signatories. For instance the 300 EEZ and 200 nautical miles of UNCLOS. They also don’t follow clean air regulation of international law for the sake of earning more.
Chinese are flooding illegal drugs “shabu” to the poor countries especially the Philippine market. It is kind of ironic Duterte is very kind to Chinese (mostly kinder than USA and EU) when he vehemently proclaimed he hates shabu too much and yet China is the leading source of that illegal commodity while the US and EU are just reprimanding him of human rights violations which is not harmful compared to actual entering of billions worth of shabu in Philippine market from China for many years now that directly hooks the Filipino minds. I guess Duterte doesn’t know what his priorities should be.
In view of the above, it is safe to say Chinese are poisonous. Those who want to capture them would have to take extra precautions because they are only one step closer to bite you either making you dead or be under their spell of tricking you forever.
AHA! HA! HA! HA! …. HAR! HAR! HAR! HAR!
1. Do you know Americans, Europeans, Canadians and the rest of white people prefers Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese THAN FILIPINOS WOMEN and MEN?
2. Do you know Thai town, Korea town, China town are the preferred go to by Americans NOT FILIPINO TOWN?
3. FilipinoTown is the most pathetic township in America if ever there is one than K-town, Thai Town, Little Saigon and others?
4. Do you know there are no Filipinos in Microsoft, Google campuses and other technology companies?
5. Do you know there are plenty of Chinese in nuclear research facilities in the U.S.?
6. Do you know there are plenty of Chinese in UC system than Filipnos despite Filipinos is the 2nd largest ethnic Asian community in California?
… THERE ARE PLENTY MORE …. I AM JUST GIVING YOU THE HIGHLIGHTS …. YOUR COMMENT IS A SHOW THAT YOU ARE A FILIPINO AND FILIPINOS ONLY MAIN SOURCE OF INFORMATION AND NEWS IS nyaaaa ….. aaaaaa ….. THE FILIPINO CHANNEL …… har! har! har! har!
Your post is hilarious, but I see your point.
Seems it’s more like a case of Sinophobia in that post. But we are still scratching our heads about why is the Philippines lagged behind China. Let’s not kid ourselves.
Are you serious? You actually DO NOT KNOW why the Philippines lags behind China (or, for that matter, 95% of the human race)?
If you don’t even have the smallest clue what’s gone wrong here, then Filipinos are doomed. You might as well just sit in your hovels with a bottle of Tanduay and wait for the Chinese to take over. Oh, wait … that’s what you’re doing anyway. As you were.
^Come on, it took China 30 YEARS to take us over and instead of doing something, we instead play victims and pin the blame on someone else.
but did you know for a FACT
that talented FILIPINOS WHO REINFORCE THE LIMP DICK IMAGINATION
of whites and chinks
are the employees of choice in HongKong/China
most specifically in the field of art and design , musical and dance presentations,
and earn healthy respect and admiration
for their effective elocution of the English language ?
why do you think China invited Filipino teachers
instead of Indian-twang/Malay smorgasboard mix
Singaporeans to educate its youth?
did it even register into your psyche
that the Philippines was considered by the British as a fallback position
from whence it would resume global business operations
right after it relinquished administrative control
of HongKong back to China during the 1997 handover ?
has it also occurred to you
that American customers prefer Filipino call center crews
who effortlessly communicate using AmericanEnglish
in sharp contrast to Indian operators who talk in curry-flavoured BritishEnglish?
did you also know for a fact that for all their porcelain-like complexion
Hongkong/Taiwanese women STINK like HELL
as they do not take a shower before leaving home for work in the morning ?
i could very well say the same thing for Caucasian men/women folk
most notably the obnoxious French variety
_just picture that decrepit hag who parades herself as UN special rapporteur.
and are you even aware that Yanqui/Euro retirees choose the Philippines
as a place to retire and settle
quoting a white-assed retiree with these words:
“You Filipinos may not realize it, but you are living in paradise!”
small wonder these unwelcome buggers
always poke their noses into Philippine sovereign affairs
in order to get a piece of the action on these beautiful islands.
finally, has it dawned upon your consciousness
that the divine-flavoured sinigang and adobo dishes
are much sought after culinary delights by the Chinese
better than shit-smelling, rat-scented Indian cuisine?
so in view of the above items, may i offer my own
hearty HAR HAR and more HAR to your lopsided racist analysis
of the value of a Filipino in international circles.
I agree with you totally! That Oratio has problems with Filipinos. I wonder what happened to make him so hostile?
Here’s another great read. But I want to post the excerpt:
https://gineersnow.com/leadership/chinese-government-dominated-scientists-engineers?fbclid=IwAR2M9zftpt8rxTCOSdU5mYLo7FM5UeyA8ocRwLGV3rzoKncmeciBqdYFlmE
What will save the Filipino is an end to a reliance on slave morality and slave tactics. It must be pointed out that The Yellow Revolution, for all its talk of people power and peaceful revolution, was in fact, only possible because there were parties ready and willing to enact violence and chaos should Marcos have chosen to not give into the demands of the Yellows. Think about that the next time someone waxes romantic about EDSA and be sure to let them know about various yellow backed communist insurgencies and CIA backed destabilization efforts that occurred in that time period while you are at it.
Now onto the matter of globalization. FUGEDABOUT IT. The trend to greater globalization has begun to shift or reduce if one takes a look at the current happenings of the past 9 years. As more and more people realize the issue that comes from the false notion of one world government or similarities between vastly different peoples, you will find that more and more people will be setting up alternatives that buck the dichotomous trends of our parents generations. Already, we are seeing this in terms of economics, with the increasing rejection of the dichotomy of socialism and Capitalism in favor of 3rd position views on the subject, and we are also seeing this in politics, with democracy being looked on as the failure it always was and alternatives being seriously considered. Evidently, this view has also entered religion, as more and more people seek a true profession of faith beyond the mere image based etiquette ridden practices that masquerade as our faith in the current era. Bet you wouldn’t know that. Well, you wouldn’t, if you actually take the pro-establishment, Yellow biased (((PolSci))) graduates opinions as being the word of God as opposed to being the ejaculations of shit that they really are.
Moreover, I think the world that we will soon be moving into is one that the readership and authorship of this “fine site” are completely unable and unprepared to deal with. Note the language I use. It’s the current era, because modernity is dead and post modernity is begging for its killer. If the Philippines is to grow and prosper, then being slightly more educated and better prepared versions of Sargon of Akkad will jot help us. In fact, it will doom us. For us to succeed and prosper requires a unified will and vision for what our country will be, one that is believed in with unquestioning faith and one that is implemented with titanic actions. Activism will not get us there. Critique will not get us there. Rationalizations will not get us there. Logic™️ and Intelligence™️ will not get us there.
Only a deep understanding of truth at a level far beyond what is capable of this site and the willingness to act on that truth will get us there. Not even Duterte will be enough to get us there, though he is certainly the best Philippine president of the past 70 years. Only a unified people with a common purpose aimed at a higher goal with strong leadership and everyone playing their distinct role will get us there.
And if you’re not willing to even consider this, then you are wholly inadequate for what is to come.
Well, before we go on to discuss this “deep understanding of truth” you say will save the day for the Philippines, perhaps you should first lay the foundation of your proposition by first defining (1) what “truth” is, (2) on that definition, what the current “capability” of “this site” for understanding that truth is exactly, and (3) what is this”level” you say that needs to be attained that would then underpin an effective effort to “get us there”.
I’m curious as to what all this you propose actually looks like in precise terms. If you can articulate it, then we have something to discuss along the lines you seem to demand that this fine site take.
Lots of words there, but I’m not even sure what you actually said.
How do you suppose Filipinos are going to come together as a unified people with a common purpose aimed at a higher goal, when most of them (a) have no higher goal than squabbling with the neighbours and (b) don’t even have the foresight to prepare their bus fare home after their begging mission to Ate who just got back from her latest OFW stint?
Wouldn’t it be simpler to just put the country on the open market and sell it to the highest bidder, human livestock included? Every Filipino could spend a glorious year or two pissing away his fraction of the profits, and then go back to drinking, lounging around, and playing with his cock. There would be no further need to concern himself with politics, freedom, democracy, or anything else; if you’re a vassal State, at least you know where you stand.