MBC Forum 2012-Almonte_Sta Maria -4D.pmd - Makati Business Club

PERSPECTIVES ON DEALING 

WITH CHINA 

GEN. JOSE T. ALMONTE (RET.) 

Former National Security Adviser and Director-General of the National Security Council 

CHITO STA. ROMANA 

Former Beijing Bureau Chief, ABC News 

FACING UP TO THE CHINA CHALLENGE 

GEN. JOSE T. ALMONTE (Ret.) 

The effective and honorable way to deal with China, 

or with any other power, is to first deal honorably with 

ourselves. In other words, we have to be a worthy 

friend, but if there is anyone who wants to make an 

enemy out of us, we must also be a worthy opponent. 

SPEAK WITH ONE VOICE 

ASEAN has made some progress for the last 45 years, 

but against an assertive China’s extravagant claim to 

the South China Sea, ASEAN has lately found itself 

unable to speak with one voice. 

.....As a result, Vietnam and the Philippines have found 

themselves largely alone in their effort to defend their 

rights to specific islets in the South China Sea according 

to international law and, of course, the United Nations 

Convention on the Laws of the Sea. 

.....Already the Vietnamese have clashed with the 

Chinese twice, in 1974 and 1988, over the Paracels 

Islands. Aggression from their big northern neighbor is 

nothing new to the Vietnamese. In fact, it was a 

thousand years of struggle against dynastic Chinese rule 

from 111 BC to 948 AD that gave birth to the 

Vietnamese nation. 

.....By contrast, how we will respond to the China 

challenge is still uncertain. I doubt whether even our 

policymakers have decided on how they would 

respond to a Chinese attempt to occupy Scarborough 

Shoal as they occupied Mischief Reef in 1995. Yet the 

quality of our response could decide whether we rise or 

fall as a nation. 

CHINA AND WORLD OPINION 

Short of war, which nobody wants or wishes to happen, 

not even the United States can stop China from 

claiming“indisputable sovereignty” over the South China 

Sea, except China itself, or the authoritative power of 

world opinion. 

On 22 August 2012, Gen. Almonte and Mr. Sta. Romana were the guests of honor at a 

general membership meeting of the Makati Business Club at the Hotel InterContinental 

Manila, Makati City. Published here are excerpts from the keynote speeches. 

MBC IMAGES/R. DEL ROSARIO

Page 2 PERSPECTIVES ON DEALING WITH CHINA 

MBC IMAGES/R. DEL ROSARIO 

Gen. Jose Almonte 

.....Just now, Beijing can only 

intimidate and bluster, as it probes 

for weaknesses in its rival 

claimants. But once China is able 

to translate its flourishing 

economic capacity into military 

power credible enough to stand 

up to the United States, then the 

geopolitical configuration in the 

Asia-Pacific could change 

radically. China is favored by time 

and circumstances. Economic 

analysts say China is likely to 

become the world’s largest 

economy in 10 to 15 years. 

......If the analysts are right, the 

Philippines has only a decade or 

so to prepare for what is likely to 

become an interesting Asia- 

Pacific future. 

LONG-TERM SECURITY 

President Aquino’s government, 

given its administrative constraints 

and the multiplicity of 

demands on its meager resources, 

has done all that could 

possibly be done, in the short 

term, to defend our nation’s 

interests in the West Philippine 

Sea. But we face a situation where 

dealing with the immediate 

problem is not enough: our 

nation’s long-term security itself 

hangs in the balance. 

.....The extravagance of the 

Chinese claim in the West 

Philippine Sea makes it difficult for 

the outsider to take seriously. But 

generations of Chinese leaders— 

from Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai 

downward—do take it seriously, 

vowing only to make good on 

the claim in its own time. 

......To ensure our nation’s safety, 

therefore, we must look to the root 

of our security, which lies not in 

the hands of anybody but in our 

own people—in each and every 

one of us. If we are eventually to 

deal honorably with the China 

challenge, we must first deal 

honorably with ourselves. We 

cannot depend on other peoples 

to fight our battles for us. 

......If our country is to prevail 

against any challenge and to 

become worthy of respect as a 

sovereign state, we must now 

begin to put in place the 

fundamental reforms that will 

enable our people to become 

effective creators of social wealth. 

CONDITIONS FOR GROWTH 

To carry out the government’s 

strategies and programs to grow 

and develop the nation, we must 

strive urgently to create the four 

conditions necessary for growth 

and development. Without these 

four conditions, no government 

will be able to effectively enforce 

our Constitution and our laws, 

and no development plan will truly 

succeed. 

.....1.We must come to terms with 

ourselves. We must build among 

us the infrastructure of nationhood. 

We must be able to answer 

the basic question of who we are, 

and live the core values our 

forebears fought and died for: 

dignity, honor, freedom, justice, 

self-determination, discipline, 

tolerance, mutual caring, and 

compassion. 

.....There is nothing our people 

cannot accomplish if we 

articulate our identity and the 

goals we seek in terms of the core 

values taught us by our heroes and 

martyrs. These core values define 

what is right or wrong for our 

people. They guide us, like our 

heroes and martyrs, to live only 

when it is right to live; and to die, 

only when it is right to die. 

.....2. No matter what it takes, we 

must end our internal wars. Our 

radical insurgency is kept alive by 

our grievous inequality and the 

elemental injustice of mass 

poverty. Both are caused by 

corruption and misgovernment. 

.....This is true of our separatist 

conflict in Mindanao—popular 

frustrations are worsened by 

rivalries over land and livelihood, 

complicated by ethnic and 

religious enmities. 

.....3. We must complete all the 

land and non-land reforms we still 

need to do. Not only will this 

make rebellion, separatism, and 

mutiny irrelevant, it will also 

accelerate our growth and 

development. Most of all, it will 

unite our people. 

.....4. We must transfer the power 

of the few over the State to the 

people as citizens. In the World 

Bank’s view, we are a country 

where state policies and their 

implementation serve not the 

common good but those of 

special interests. The capture by 

vested groups of the Philippine 

State and its regulatory agencies 

has made our economy the least 

competitive among comparable 

economies in the Asia-Pacific. 

.....In sum, we must put our house 

in order. We must level our 

playing field of competition to 

grow and develop the nation. 

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE 

As we create the four conditions 

necessary for growth and 

development, we must also carry 

out our development plans. 

Given the uncertainties building 

up in the Asia-Pacific, we do not 

have the luxury of time. 

.....It is the Chinese people’s 

historic sense that is driving their


country’s rise. They count their 

recovery from generations of 

humiliation at the hands of the 

great powers lasting 150 years— 

starting from the European effort 

to open up China around 1800. 

In 1949, Mao proclaimed China 

has stood up. But China began 

to recover economically only after 

Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, 

which reflect the same spirit of the 

four conditions suggested earlier. 

In three and a half decades, 

China has become the secondlargest 

economy. 

.....We, too, must tap into our 

people’s sense of nationality and 

do no less. By creating the four 

conditions necessary for growth 

and development, and by 

simultaneously carrying out the 

government’s development 

plans, we can modernize our 

country without leaving anyone 

behind these next 10 to 15 years. 

NO PRIMROSE PATH TO GROWTH 

Let us not deceive ourselves. There 

are no short cuts—no primrose 

paths—to growth and development. 

But we must never give up, 

even if our country’s rise takes 150 

years or a thousand. We have no 

choice. The alternative is too dire 

to contemplate. 

.....We must work together—rich 

and poor—to prevent our country 

from being reduced into a 

tributary, a vassal, a province, or 

a condominium of any power. 

Those who sacrificed and died for 

us and Filipino generations yet to 

come will never forgive us if we 

fail to summon the courage and 

the will to put in place the four 

conditions necessary for our future 

without delay. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER 

JOSE T. ALMONTE 

PHILIPPINES AND CHINA: 

CONFLICT OR COOPERATION? 


Philippine-China relations are now 

at its lowest point since the 

establishment of diplomatic ties 

in 1975. The issue of China will 

continue to be a major challenge 

for our country and our 

diplomacy. 

.....As a saying goes, a country 

can choose its friends but it 

cannot choose its neighbors. In 

our case, our biggest neighbor is 

China. So, it is almost incumbent, 

necessary, and important for us to 

understand China, so that we will 

have friendly relations with it. 

.....To take a leaf from Sun Tzu, the 

ancient Chinese strategist from 

The Art of War, “Know your 

opponent and know yourself, 

and then you will be able to attain 

victory.” 

PILLARS OF SUPPORT 

In the case of China, the first question 

is: How did the Chinese 

regime—the Communist Party of 

China—manage to survive? 

What are the sources of legitimacy, 

given that they don’t 

have direct elections in China? 

.....I think there are three pillars of 

support: 

.....The first pillar is economic 

reforms, which led to economic 

prosperity. This enabled them, in 

a period of three decades, to 

become the world’s secondlargest 

economy, and to reduce 

the poverty rate from almost 85% 

to about 15%. That is the social 

contract in China: the Communist 

Party allowed its citizens to 

Chito Sta. Romana 

engage in business, to have 

economic freedom, and become 

prosperous, as long as they don’t 

cross a line—that is, that they 

don’t organize and don’t try to 

overthrow the Communist Party. 

.....The second pillar, and this plays 

a direct role as far as the South 

China Sea conflict is concerned,is 

the rise of Chinese nationalism. It 

is now the unifying ideology, 

given the decline in appeal of the 

ideas of Marxism, Leninism, and 

the ideas of Mao. This is rooted in 

the historical narrative that China 

used to be the preeminent power 

before the 19 th century, but went 

through a century of humiliation 

due to foreign invasion, and it was 

only after the victory of the 

communists that they were able 

to stand up again. 

A graduate of the Philippine Military Academy in 1956, Gen. Almonte was given the Distinguished Conduct 

Award after serving with the Philippine contingent in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969. After his retirement from 

the Armed Forces in 1986, he was appointed to take charge of recovering President Ferdinand Marcos’s 

alleged hidden wealth in Switzerland. He capped his long career in public service when he was appointed 

as President Fidel Ramos’s national security adviser and director-general of the National Security Council. In 

1998, he was conferred one of the country’s highest honors, the Order of Sikatuna. 

MBC IMAGES/R. DEL ROSARIO


....iIf all else fails, if the economy 

would falter, nationalism could no 

longer hold the situation together, 

and there is a threat to social 

stability and regime survival, there 

is the Chinese People’s Liberation 

Army as the ultimate guarantor of 

their survival. 

ON THE SOUTH CHINA SEA 

China has always had their 

historical claim, but they 

succinctly put it together in a letter 

they submitted to the UN in May 

2009. According to the letter: 

“China has indisputable sovereignty 

over the islands in the South 

China Sea and the adjacent 

waters, and enjoys sovereign rights 

and jurisdiction over the relevant 

waters as well as the seabed and 

subsoil thereof,” and they attached 

a map to the letter. 

.....The letter continued to say that 

Nansha (the Chinese term for the 

Spratlys) is fully entitled to Territorial 

Sea, which is 12 miles; to Exclusive 

Economic Zone (EEZ), which is 200 

miles; and to Continental Shelf, 

which is also 200 miles. 

.....The map given by the Chinese 

is the famous nine-dash-line map, 

where nine dashes supposedly 

constitute the maritime borders of 

China. China claims all the 

islands, shoals, and reefs within 

that line. The problem is that 

countries around the South China 

Sea have overlapping claims and 

exclusive economic zones which 

fall within the nine dashes. 

.....The nine-dash-line map was 

originally drawn up in 1947, not by 

the Communist Party, but by the 

Kuomintang. There were eleven 

dashes. Then the map was 

inherited by Mao Zedong and his 

regime. They gave up two dashes 

in 1953, in what was supposed to 

be a friendly gesture to Ho Chi 

Minh and the Vietnamese revolutionaries. 

UNDERLYING ISSUES 

One underlying issue is the issue of 

sovereignty. Who owns the Spratly 

Islands and Scarborough 

Shoal? Who 

are entitled to the 

EEZs these areas 

generate? 

.....The heart of the 

problem is the economic 

issue. At stake 

are the resources: 

fisheries in Scarborough 

Shoal and, 

in the case of the 

Spratlys and Recto 

Bank, the oil and 

natural gas deposits. The current 

source of almost half of our 

electricity is Malampaya, which is 

off Palawan. Our government 

expects it to be depleted within 

10 years. That is why there is very 

great interest in developing Recto 

Bank—the Sampaguita [gas 

field], which is supposed to be 

three or four times more than 

Malampaya. 

.....Another underlying issue is the 

strategic and geopolitical rivalry 

between China and the United 

States. The basic question is, who 

will control the strategic sea lanes 

in the South China Sea? At 

present, you have a dominant 

power in at least benign control 

of it, the US. But then, you have a 

rising power in China that is not 

directly challenging the US. Over 

time, expect that geopolitical 

rivalry to intensify. 

.....Between these two powers, 

there is developing mutual 

distrust. From the point of view of 

the Chinese, they think they are 

being encircled by the US and its 

allies in the region. From the point 

of view of the US, China is out to 

control and dominate the South 

China Sea, and possibly cut 

off the sea lanes and deprive the 

Americans of freedom of navigation. 

AMBIGUOUS AND QUESTIONABLE 

The nine-dash line is without 

coordinates on the map, so it is 

ambiguous in its scope and 

meaning, and thus a question- 

able basis in international law. 

The ancient historical maps and 

documents are also not 

considered a reliable basis for 

territorial claims. Moreover, the 

Chinese nine-dash line conflicts 

with the provisions of the 

UNCLOS. It exceeds what is 

permitted, and it intersects and 

overlaps with the exclusive 

economic zones of several ASEAN 

countries. 

.....From the point of view of the 

Philippines, China’s historical 

claim does not necessarily 

constitute a historical title to the 

Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal. 

China has to demonstrate that it 

exercised effective, continuous 

occupation and jurisdiction over 

a long period of time. 

.....What makes it more complicated 

is that China has defined 

its core interests, and one core 

interest is national soverneignty 

and territorial integrity. The other 

core interests like regime stability, 

national security, and sustained 

economic development are 

perfectly understandable. But 

what has happened is that, in the 

past, national sovereignty from 

the view of the Chinese really 

referred to the issue of Taiwan, 

Tibet, and Xinjiang—all considered 

separatist states. It is in 

recent years that the islands in 

the East China Sea and the South 

China Sea have risen in importance, 

and this is related to a 

debate that is going on within the 

Chinese leadership.


HAWKS V. DOVES 

There is a debate between the 

hardliners and the moderates— 

between the “hawks” and the 

“doves”—in China, and there is 

increasing military influence on 

the formulation and conduct of 

Chinese foreign policy. As of now, 

the hardliners appear to be on 

top. 

.....China is in the middle of a 

leadership transition, which would 

culminate in a Party Congress in 

a few months. There is also an 

intense inner party struggle—the 

most serious since Tiananmen in 

1989. On the same day the 

Philippines decided to assert its 

sovereignty on Scarborough 

Shoal, the Politburo in China 

announced the sacking of Bo 

Xilai. There was this intense 

factional struggle going on, and 

we became collateral damage. 

The factions united on the issue of 

national sovereignty against a 

challenger, in this case, the 

Philippines. 

.....During this transition in 

leadership, which happens every 

10 years, Chinese leaders cannot 

afford to look weak in front of 

their constituents. In a sense, 

China is at a crossroads: will it 

continue its peaceful rise and 

good neighborly policy, or will it 

succumb to ultranationalist 

pressures on the territorial issue? 

The Party Congress will give us an 

indication of the direction China 

will take. 

.... 

CHALLENGES AHEAD 

I think we have to accept that the 

issue of sovereignty is a tough issue 

to deal with. It’s a problem that 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER 


cannot be solved immediately, so 

we have to put the issue of 

sovereignty in the backburner and 

try to normalize ties again. The 

immediate goal is to restore 

normal tourism and trade ties. It 

is a policy of engagement— 

engaging China in all spheres, 

including diplomacy and in 

discussing the sovereignty issue— 

as well as “hedging our bets” in 

case of any eventuality. 

.....Our challenge is to avoid any 

miscalculation that would lead to 

armed conflict, to exercise 

restraint and resort to quiet, 

patient diplomacy and change 

the climate of public opinion. 

From the point of view of the 

Philippines, China has emerged as 

a hostile country. The mirror image 

is true in China. 

.....Ultimately, it’s about how to 

find a mutually acceptable 

solution, a mutually beneficial 

solution. 

.....In the case of ASEAN, the 

recent Cambodia meeting has 

shown that there is disunity, and 

it has shown that China has 

worked with its ally, Cambodia, 

to prevent a communiqué that 

would mention Scarborough 

Shoal. It’s going to be a 

challenging period for Philippine 

diplomacy, working double-time 

with ASEAN to seek a binding code 

of conduct. 

.....As for Recto Bank, the solution 

may lie in the business community 

of both sides to have a mutually 

acceptable contract that would 

enable us to jointly exploit and 

share the product. If we were to 

do it unilaterally, we should 

expect the Chinese to challenge 

The Makati Business Club invites guest 

speakers to its General Membership 

Meetings and MBC Briefings to discuss 

public issues and trends, whether local or 

global, that have an impact on Philippine 

development. MBC Forum highlights the 

speeches and discussions at these 

gatherings. The full text of speeches and 

other presentations may also be found at 

the MBC website, www.mbc.com.ph. 

us, as what happened in 

Scarborough Shoal. 

.....As for China in the coming 

future, the question is, would it be 

a peaceful power that abides by 

international law, or would it 

become an aggressive superpower? 

I think a struggle is still 

ongoing in the Chinese soul right 

now. 

.....In conclusion, I refer to an old 

African saying: “When two big 

elephants fight, it’s the grass 

underneath that gets trampled 

upon.” I think there is a lesson for 

the Philippines in this African 

saying. 

Excerpts edited by 

PAOLO ADRIAN B. MONTEIRO 

Research Associate 

Mr. Sta. Romana first arrived in China in 1971 as the head of a visiting Filipino youth delegation, then found 

himself unable to return to the Philippines because of the prevailing political tensions and subsequent 

declaration of Martial Law. He immersed himself in deep study of the Chinese language and culture, and 

worked as a translation editor for numerous Chinese publications. In 1989, he joined ABC News, and up to 

2010, he covered numerous milestones in China’s modern history, with him and his news team earning 

various accolades, including an Emmy Award. Since returning to the Philippines in 2010, Sta. Romana has 

become a sought-after resource person on China and its foreign and economic policies.

MBC Forum 2012-Almonte_Sta Maria -4D.pmd - Makati Business Club

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