Common sense diplomacy with China

Finally! Someone in government has put on the thinking cap and pushed for a practical solution that will surely be beneficial for the Philippines and could be the beginning of better relations with China.

- CITO BELTRAN

The Philippine government announced late last week that Chinese citizens, particularly tourists and businesspeople, can now enter the Philippines visa free, provided they are traveling only for tourism or business purposes, that they have confirmed hotel bookings and a return ticket to port of origin.

The visa-free policy is clearly designed to once again open doors and attract Chinese tourists to the Philippines, as our tourism revenues and targets continue to struggle from the absence of Chinese visitors.

From what I gathered online, in 2019, Chinese visitors totaled somewhere between 1.7 million to 1.9 million in one year. In terms of revenues, reports claim that the Chinese visitors spent $2.3 billion during their accumulated stay in the country.

All that came to an abrupt halt because of the COVID pandemic, the controversy over where COVID came from, the country’s emergency measures to ban Chinese tourists in the Philippines in order to “control” the spread of COVID. Ironically, it was China that provided the Philippines access to the Chinese-made Sinovac after western countries applied the “us first” policy for their vaccines.

As the COVID pandemic died down, the Philippines found itself having to choose where her loyalties lie - side with the US in its pissing contest against China or remain friendly with China.

Marcos Jr. claimed to be independently neutral but actually chose Boss Trump, allowing a stronger presence of US military forces and hardware. The Philippines ended up acknowledging Taiwan in spite of our “One-China Policy.”