The fight against Covid-19 is the main topic on the Philippines and China’s bilateral calendar, but concerns are emerging about the neighboring superpower’s competitive moves in the West Philippine Sea, adding the ongoing structure on a Philippine reef and the passage of a new law allowing its coast guard to oppose firing on foreign vessels.
“Due to the pandemic, cooperation between the Philippines and China in the fight against Covid-19 has gained importance in bilateral relations. In fact, it is now the focal point of the bilateral agenda,” said the Philippine ambassador to China, Jose Santiago. Chito,” Santa Romana said Feb. 25 in a Zoom forum on the country’s vaccine strategy and diplomacy, organized through think tank Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation.
The Philippines has begun public vaccination against Covid-19 with the arrival on February 28 of 600,000 doses of vaccines donated from China. Manufactured through Sinovac, the vaccines have obtained emergency use authorization from the Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for clinically healthy patients. other people between the ages of 18 and 59.
The pandemic has caused the Philippines to turn to China for medical supplies, adding testing devices and PPE (physical protective appliances). The Philippine Air Force has flown more than 70 flights to China in the past year to pick them up, according to Santa Romana. .
“Customers for closer cooperation with China in the field of vaccines are really promising given the deepening friendship and cooperation between the two countries. This is also a component of the independent foreign policy carried out during the Duterte administration,” Santa Romana said.
The Philippines is the latest country in Southeast Asia to launch mass vaccination against the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, however, vaccines smuggled from China were administered to members of President Rodrigo Duterte’s protective bodyguards and reportedly to more than 100,000 Chinese in the country. flouting the law and provoking widespread condemnation.
The mess in the government’s efforts was revealed after Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin Jr. accused Health Secretary Francisco Duque III of “dropping the ball” in negotiations to get the U. S. company Pfizer to deliver vaccines to the country as early as January 2021. Duque denied it.
The Sinovac vaccines arrived as the nation’s capital began seeing infections at more than 2,000 cases per day, up from an average of around 1,600 per day in January after the holidays. The pandemic has killed more than 12,000 Filipinos.
Sinovac’s vaccines have been used in mass vaccination systems in several countries, including Indonesia, where President Joko Widodo won two doses of the vaccine. In the Philippines, however, the Chinese vaccine has responded to their reservations given its 50. 4% efficacy rate in trials in Brazil. The FDA also didn’t tell fitness staff concerned about Covid-19 patients.
The vaccine from the American company Pfizer has an efficacy rate of 94%.
Meanwhile, the pandemic has slowed China’s advances in the West Philippine Sea.
The U. S. company Simularity, which uses software to scan giant spaces, has published satellite photographs showing symptoms of structure in several spaces in Panganiban or Mischief Reef.
Among the designs that gave the impression of being on the reef were a “permanent cylindrical design 16 meters in diameter” and a “large radome cover. “Simularity indicated that those designs may simply be a constant radar design and an antenna mount design, respectively.
Panganiban or Mischief Reef is located within the Exclusive Economic Zone or EEZ of the Philippines, which is two hundred nautical miles long. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague upheld the country’s sovereign rights over the reef in a landmark 2016 ruling that also rejected China’s decision. extensive claims over almost the entire South China Sea.
Duterte, however, reversed the move to ties with China. In February 2020, he also took his risk of setting in motion the termination of the visiting forces agreement with the United States, which allowed for the rotational presence of U. S. troops in the country. Since then, the procedure has been “suspended” while the two countries continued to talk about bilateral relations.
The Foreign Ministry has announced diplomatic protests against China’s activities in the West Philippine Sea, adding the passage of a new law allowing its shores to fire on foreign ships, even as it implements Duterte’s pivot to Beijing.
Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said the new law authorizes armed aggression through the Chinese coast guard and violates the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, he told Rappler in an interview. Carpio called on the Philippine government to register a request for arbitration when China enforces the law and encouraged other Southeast Asian countries to do the same.
The country’s reaction to the pandemic is a separate factor of national security, said retired Philippine Navy Vice Commander Rommel Jude Ong. But there are fears that China will simply use the vaccines to pressure the country on issues such as the West Philippine Sea.
“I don’t think the challenge here is political. The challenge is the messages,” Ong told the PCIJ. He is now the executive director of the security think tank Security Reform Initiative.
Ong noted how frontline doctors and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have done a balancing act, referring to fitness workers’ resistance to Chinese vaccines and the military’s moves in the West Philippine Sea.
On the eve of the vaccine rollout, the Philippine General Hospital Physicians Association (PGH) said that 95% of its citizens and fellows did not need to be vaccinated with the Sinovac vaccine and requested that the vaccine be evaluated through the Health Technology Assessment Council. , an independent advisory body.
The hospital’s director, Gerardo Legaspi, the first frontline doctor to be vaccinated, tried to allay people’s fears when the vaccine was rolled out on March 1.
“The balancing act is carried out through the frontline actors themselves. Check out the recent statements via PGH and AFP. Regarding the West Philippine Sea, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines has issued statements to increase patrols [in the area] following the enactment of the China Coast Guard Law,” Ong said.
Despite Duterte’s efforts to publicize Chinese vaccines, ongoing bilateral negotiations with the government demonstrate that U. S. corporations are in a position to meet most of the country’s vaccine needs.
In addition to Sinovac, the Philippines is also waiting for vaccines from the Covax center run by the World Health Organization, the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca, the Russian company Gamaleya, and the U. S. companies Pfizer, Novavax, Janssen, and Moderna for around 140 million doses. This will be smart for 70 million Filipinos, the target number to be vaccinated against herd immunity against Covid-19.
“We don’t favor any specific logo or country. The bottom line is that we want to get as many as possible from as many pharmaceutical corporations as possible that have been able to do this,” said Restituto Padilla, a spokesperson for the National Task Force. for the Covid-19 Response, in the same forum he attended for Santa Romana.
“We will have the right to vaccine options,” he said.