Last of three parts

WHILE Washington gnaws on its own obsessions — Epstein’s shadow, Trump’s visible mental erosion, MAGA’s hairline fractures, and the TACO’s soft retreat on tariffs — history has slipped the room. Power did not vanish; it relocated. Beijing is no longer “rising.” It has arrived.

What is taking shape is a “Quiet Empire”: industrial, technological, logistical — engineered for endurance while Western democracies squander time on scandals and spectacles.

What rotten ecosystem emboldened Co, the Discayas and Gardiola?
As 2025 closes, so too, by chance, does my three-part series on America’s waning primacy. The year 2026 opens with the contemporary Middle Kingdom stepping onto the world stage, unannounced — and unapologetically prepared.

China’s rise was not fate; it was design — patient, engineered and deliberate. It came without fanfare, not by proclamation but by accretion, like a tide advancing while others debate the weather forecast. As Western capitals debated intentions, Beijing built — ports, platforms, supply chains, code — with monastic focus. This moment cannot be read without its two defining figures, avatars of opposing creeds. Their contrast is not decorative. It is the hinge on which this decade turns on.

The shouter and the strategist

On one end of the global stage stands Donald Trump — ringmaster of America’s unraveling — wielding decibels as doctrine and bravado as substitute for strategy and a relationship to truth so casual it qualifies as malpractice. He declares victory before negotiations end, massages facts into theater, and treats diplomacy as a personal stage. In Trump’s universe, noise is policy, repetition is method, and fiction, shouted often enough, graduates into truth — shades of Goebbels!

Across from him stands Xi Jinping — quiet by resolve, methodical by instinct. Where Trump jolts markets with stochasticity, Xi reshapes continents in silence. One proclaims “historic deals” that evaporate by dusk; the other unveils modest moves that, almost unnoticed, reroute the world’s arteries — and its future.

Trump approaches geopolitics like a casino he once owned — managed to bankruptcy. Xi treats it as a Confucian chess match played on a thousand-year clock. One craves global recognition; the other behaves as if his victory is already guaranteed. History rarely recollects who shouted the loudest. It remembers the one who endured.

One builds, one boasts

The world tilts not by accident but by contrast. One superpower governs through spectacle; the other through structure. Washington’s statecraft has collapsed into performance art — Oval Office theatrics as prime-time content, pronouncements masquerading as policy, shows of strength whose shelf life depends on how long allies are willing to play along. Diplomacy becomes theater: loud, brittle and increasingly ignored.

Beijing governs differently. It does not sermonize; it builds. Roads across Central Asia, tunnels through Southeast Asia, anchorages along contested coastlines — influence poured into concrete and steel. China embeds power into geography itself. Nations eventually discover a sobering truth: they need China far more than China needs their applause.

While America claims power, China builds its physical foundations. In geopolitics, as in engineering, the builder eventually owns the house.

The Belt and Road – an imperial blueprint

Washington waved off the Belt and Road as “debt-trap diplomacy” — a soothing slogan that masked a deeper anxiety: America’s irrelevance. While it argued semantics, China rewired continents. Ports in Sri Lanka, rail lines across Africa, fiber-optic spines in the Pacific, highways binding Central Asia into a single market — these were not projects but anchors.

Loans became leverage; infrastructure became presence. The Global South, in particular, noticed the contrast: one superpower offers lectures on governance, the other delivers a bridge — on time, under budget, and impossible to ignore.

The core of this empire is industrial. In a global economy dictated by production and markets, control resides with the nation that dominates the supply chain. China currently sits at the chokepoints of the 21st century: rare earth minerals, lithium-ion batteries, pharmaceuticals and solar technology.

Trump’s tariffs were sold as liberation — a MAGA fantasy that factories would march home draped in flags. Instead, they left China only to surface in Vietnam, Mexico and Malaysia, still wired to Chinese capital, components and logistics. The map shifted; dependence didn’t.

America spoke of decoupling. China tightened the bolts. The world merely sublets China’s factory — a quiet power no speech can dismantle.

The digital frontier

While the United States remains embroiled in legislative battles over social media platforms like TikTok, Beijing has quietly built the digital architecture of the future. By exporting 5G networks, e-commerce platforms and AI-driven surveillance systems to Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, China is embedding itself in the data flows of the developing world.

This is “systems capture.” Influence in the modern era is found in the networks through which a society functions — its payment systems, its communications grid, and its security infrastructure. This form of conquest is invisible and systemic, making it far more durable than traditional military alliances.

The new geopolitical math

China’s strategy is not to dethrone the United States. It is to make the world less dependent on Uncle Trump and the volatility of the American political system.

Beijing has succeeded in this through a methodical diversification of trade routes and currencies. While the US dollar remains the world’s primary reserve currency, it is no longer the only option. The global order is shifting from a system of rigid alliances to a transactional marketplace. China’s triumph lies in providing nations with an alternative. In the logic of power, the nation that offers choices gains influence, while the nation that demands exclusive loyalty often loses it.

As Beijing constructed the scaffolding of this new order, the American political class engaged in what can be described as “political interpretative dance.” Congress held hearings, cable news cycles generated outrage, and social media platforms became the primary stage for chaotic discourse. Throughout this, China performed one thing the West forgot how to deliver: results!

China never concealed its ambitions; it printed them in ports, railways and trillion-dollar credit lines. What failed was Western arrogance — the assumption that destiny was a monopoly. Beijing picked up the tools the West abandoned and built the future, while Washington lingered, lecturing on a past already expired.

The age of the Quiet Empire

History does not trumpet new eras; it whispers them. And this epoch arrived quietly, built brick by brick by a nation that perfected patience while its rival perfected noise and bluster. Trump promised to Make America Great Again. Xi pursued a far less theatrical mission: to make China inevitable. One man built an audience; the other built an empire.

The Quiet Empire advances without banners or bravado. Its instruments are contracts, systems and time. It wins the long game because it plans beyond the next election — and beyond the next regime convulsion — 50 years out, methodically. The last decade delivers a blunt lesson: Conceit is not strength.

As this century hardens, influence will belong not to those who shout, but to those who arrive, build and endure. Time — indifferent, unsentimental, relentless — always sides with the patient.

The Quiet Empire has entered the stage. It did not declare its arrival. It simply took its place — and when the lights finally go out, it will be the last still standing.

The Senate President crowed yesterday that the party he nominally coheads, PDP-Laban, has a “pleasant problem” — too many potential senatorial candidates. Koko Pimentel’s estimate is they have up to 20 possible choices for the 12-person slate for the 2019 senatorial race. But his list includes the five administration-affiliated senatorial incumbents up for reelection next year. This is a group that has made noises that, much as it prefers to remain in the administration camp, it is unhappy with the way PDP-Laban has been designating its local leaders and candidates, and therefore prefers to strike out on its own, perhaps in alliance with the other administration (regional) party, Hugpong ng Pagbabago, headed by the President’s daughter and current Davao City mayor, Sara Duterte.

Setting aside, then, the five-person “Force,” the administration-oriented but not PDP-friendly reelectionists (Nancy Binay, Sonny Angara, Cynthia Villar, Grace Poe, and JV Ejercito), what Koko’s crowing over is a mixed bag. Some of them have been floated by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez (with whom Mayor Duterte clashed in recent months): six representatives (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who is in her last term in the House of Representatives; Albee Benitez, Karlo Nograles, Rey Umali, Geraldine Roman, and Zajid Mangudadatu), three Cabinet members (Bong Go, Harry Roque, and Francis Tolentino), and two other officials (Mocha Uson and Ronald dela Rosa), which still only adds up to 11 possible candidates (who are the missing three?).

Of all of these, the “Force” reelectionists are only fair-weather allies of the present dispensation; their setting themselves apart is about much more than the mess PDP-Laban made in, say, San Juan where support for the Zamoras makes it extremely unattractive for JV Ejercito to consider being in the same slate. Their cohesion is about thinking ahead: Creating the nucleus for the main coalition to beat in the 2022 presidential election. The contingent of congressmen and congresswomen who could become candidates for the Senate, however, seems more a means to kick the Speaker’s rivals upstairs (at least in the case of Benitez and Arroyo) and pad the candidates’ list with token but sacrificial candidates, a similar situation to the executive officials being mentioned as possible candidates (of the executive officials, only Go seems viable, but making him run would deprive the President of the man who actually runs the executive department, and would be a clear signal that the administration is shifting to a post-term protection attitude instead of the more ambitious system-change mode it’s been on, so far).

Vice President Leni Robredo has been more circumspect, saying she’s not sure the Liberal Party can even muster a full slate. The party chair, Kiko Pangilinan, denied that a list circulating online (incumbent Bam Aquino, former senators Mar Roxas, Jun Magsaysay, TG Guingona, current and former representatives Jose Christopher Belmonte, Kaka Bag-ao, Edcel Lagman, Raul Daza, Gary Alejano and Erin Tañada, former governor Eddie Panlilio and Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña) had any basis in fact.

What both lists have in common is they could be surveys-on-the-cheap, trial balloons to get the public pulse. Until the 17th Congress reconvenes briefly from May 14 to June 1 for the tail end of its second regular session (only to adjourn sine die until the third regular session begins on July 23), it has nothing much to do. Except, that is, for the barangay elections in May, after a last-ditch effort by the House to postpone them yet again to October failed.

Names can be floated but the real signal will come in July, when the President mounts the rostrum and calls for the big push for a new constitution—or not. Connected to this would be whether the Supreme Court disposes of its own chief, which would spare the Senate—and thus, free up the legislative calendar—to consider Charter change instead of an impeachment trial. In the meantime, what congressmen do seem abuzz over is an unrefusable invitation to the Palace tomorrow — to mark Arroyo’s birthday. An event possibly pregnant with meaning.

Here’s a striking statement about love shared with me by an English college mentor. “Love knows no grammar. How it works can’t be measured by any parts or figures of speech. It goes beyond the literate and illiterate. The sad reality is that, even a fool who has got no philosophy is not spared of its harsh reality.” After almost three decades, I reminded him through a private message of his words. Here’s what he said. “Thank you, Jord. This statement about love is searing to the heart. And, yes, fools do fall for it too. But I thought that we as well speak of the beauty that it gives and not so much focus on the harsh realities. After all, our country has had enough of the negativities.” Thank you, dearest Sir Eugene.

In these decisive times when our nation trembles under the weight of corruption, inequality, and disillusionment, it is you―the youth, burning with idealism, courage, and an unyielding sense of right―who must stand at the forefront of CHANGE. The future of the Philippines hangs in the balance, calling not for silence or apathy, but for unity, conviction, and action. Let your dreams be the spark that ignites renewal; let your voices thunder against injustice; let your hands build the nation our forebears envisioned but never fulfilled. Now is the hour to awaken, to rise, and to lead the march toward a just and transformed Philippines.

Remember, the pages of our history resound with the triumphs of youth who dared to dream and act. From the Propagandists who wielded the pen against tyranny to the Katipuneros who took up arms for freedom, it was always the young who ignited revolutions and rebuilt nations. As Dr. Jose Rizal declared, “The youth is the hope of our motherland,” but that hope is not a gift to be passively claimed; it is a duty to be earned through courage and purpose.

Today’s generation must transform awareness into action―to confront corruption with integrity, to challenge inequality with empathy, and to counter apathy with participation. The time for mere commentary has passed. What the nation demands now is commitment, creativity, and collective resolve. When the youth stand united in conscience and conviction, no obstacle is insurmountable, no reform impossible. The power to redeem the nation’s promise lies not in the hands of the few, but in the awakened spirit of the many. Rise, therefore, as one generation with one objective―to forge a Philippines worthy of its people’s deepest hopes. And to those who were once the torchbearers of youth but have since laid down their fire―hear this call.

The nation does not forget its veterans of hope, those who once believed that change was possible but have since grown weary in the long twilight of disappointment. Thus far history grants no sanctuary to resignation. It demands of every generation the same unrelenting duty―to defend what is right, to confront what is wrong, and to labor still for what remains unfinished.

Now is the moment to rise again. Let not caution disguise itself as wisdom, nor comfort as peace. The courage that once stirred your youth still flickers within; rekindle it, and let it burn anew for the sake of those who follow. Your experience, tempered by time, must now join hands with the fervor of the young - to guide, to mentor, to strengthen.

Together, let the wisdom of the seasoned and the passion of the rising coalesce into a single, indomitable force for renewal. For the task of nation-building is not bound by age, but by conviction. The call of the motherland resounds to all who still believe that the story of the Filipino is not yet complete―and that redemption, though delayed, is still within our grasp if only we choose to act once more. And to those whose hands have long gripped the levers of power―hardened by privilege, dulled by entitlement―hear this with clarity: the era of self-preservation must yield to the dawn of selfless service.

The nation can no longer afford leaders who mistake possession for stewardship, nor governance for dominion. The time has come to relinquish the throne of complacency and make way for the custodians of vision, courage, and renewal.

To step aside is not to surrender, but to honor the sacred rhythm of nationhood―to allow new voices, new hearts, and new minds to breathe life into institutions that have grown stale from neglect. True leadership is an act of stewardship, and stewardship demands humility―to know when to lead, and when to pass the torch. Those who have ruled long enough must now become mentors, not masters; guides, not gatekeepers.

To the youth who will inherit this burden and blessing alike, the call is equally profound. Lead not with arrogance, but with awareness; not with impulse, but with integrity. Let optimism be your discipline―a conscious act of faith in the nation’s capacity to rise again. Lead with inclusivity that unites rather than divides, with courage that reforms rather than destroys, and with resilience that endures when hope seems frail.

For the measure of a new generation’s greatness lies not in its defiance alone, but in its wisdom to build where others have failed. Let your leadership become the living testament that the Philippines, once disillusioned, has learned at last to believe again―through you.

Now, the Filipino youth stand at a defining crossroad of history. The echoes of the past and the murmurs of the future converge upon this moment, and in your hands rests the fragile, however formidable promise of a nation reborn. You are the inheritors of unfinished dreams and the architects of what is yet to be. United in thought and deed, strengthened by the wisdom of history and the fire of conviction, you possess the power to shape a Philippines anchored in justice, animated by democracy, and sustained by the collective flourishing of its people.

The mantle of responsibility has passed to you. Do not falter beneath its weight; bear it with courage, for it is through your resolve that the nation will rise from the ruins of complacency. Let your unity transcend boundaries of region, class, and creed. Let your integrity redefine leadership, and your compassion restore faith in the Filipino spirit.

This is your hour. Let this narrative be not merely a call to awaken, but a solemn commitment―to the country that nurtures you, to the people who believe in you, and to the generations who will follow your example. Stand firm, for you are the heartbeat of a nation yearning to live with dignity once more. Speak right and shine!

Rise, Filipino youth, and let history remember that when your time came ―you stood unwavering, and the nation moved forward.