People-to-people engagement in Beijing

People-to-people engagement in Beijing Featured

Lito Monico C. Lorenzana
LML Polettiques
20 November 2024
Comments:DISQUS_COMMENTS
LAST month, from Oct. 13 to 17, delegates from the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations (PCFR) flew to Beijing to meet with their counterparts, the Chinese Peoples Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA). This annual dialogue is hosted in Beijing this year; alternatively, next year's will be held in the Philippines.

These engagements have been going on since 2016, initiated by former president Fidel V. Ramos and former Chinese ambassador to the Philippines, Fu Ying, for the purpose of developing a people-to-people (P2P) relationship augmenting a government-to-government (G2) one.

Roundtable discussion

With the capable leadership of Alejandro "Babes" Flores, the PCFR president and his counterpart CPIFA president, Wang Chao, both had the delicacy to navigate the sensitive waters of the RTD (roundtable discussion) with preliminaries on common safe interests. Babes started by congratulating President Xi Jinping and the PROC on their 75th anniversary, dexterously pointing out China's assumption of "superpower status in a relatively short time." Clearly a kiss-ass statement, but appropriate, nonetheless.

It may well be noted that in the Philippine press and on social media that week — presumably in Beijing and liberal Shanghai, too — the Philippine and Chinese coast guard boats' konfrontasi about the water skirmishes and the plight of Filipino fisherfolk were prominently discussed.

At the RTD, former Philippine trade secretary Fred Pascual managed to present a well-designed keynote speech on the economy, trade and culture, injecting cooperative possibilities, including FDIs, particularly on agriculture. Former agriculture undersecretary Techie Capellan, the lone female PCFR delegate, touched on renewable energy and the possibility of exporting locally produced solar panels; businessman Albert Velasco spoke on the service industry as our competitive edge, and PSE President Nonoy Yulo called for the narrowing of the huge trade gap between our two countries. All tiptoed on brittle glass in their short remarks, not addressing the big elephant in the room.

Until Lt. Gen (ret). Ed Adan and Ambassador VQ both courageously delved into security, stability and conflict in the South China Seas (West Philippine Sea) — hinting further that the Philippines is an independent country and not a vassal to America. And the dam burst! Dr. Wu Sichun, chairman of the Huayong Center for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance, anticipating this line of arguments responded with his own, seething in Mandarin — although the man speaks perfect English — having lived in Washington, D.C.

The rebuke echoed Madame Fu Ying's the day before the formal RTD when a PCFR member presented a similar line of concern. Except that the lady ambassador had a more barbed repartee, "I found it difficult that these would come from a group of your caliber." Indeed! We were not to mention incidents in the SCS/WPS! I don't blame my colleague for attempting real dialogue — an indiscretion and a diplomatic slip-up in the eyes of our Chinese host.

PCFR-CFR

As a backgrounder, PCFR is a private organization with membership coming from the elite sectors of Philippine society but more heavily populated by business, academia, the law and former high government officials, particularly from the foreign affairs and security sectors. With such affiliation, its umbilical cord is neatly tied with the policy-formulating institutions of government.

On this, it shares a similar profile to a lesser degree with its US counterpart, from whence the nomenclature may have been adopted. The older US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), founded in 1912, is a private think tank specializing in US foreign policy and international relations. Both entities are independent, nonprofit organizations and claim non-partisanship — and incongruously profess to be non-political. But it speaks the language and practices the arcana of politics. And politics are what motivate geopolitical dynamics. According to the CFR literature, "[i]ts membership has included senior politicians, secretaries of state, CIA directors, bankers, lawyers, professors, corporate directors, CEOs and prominent media figures."

But unlike the PCFR, the American CFR has a revolving door between the private sector and private interests with whatever administration is in the ascendant, Republican or Democrat. The current US president-elect Trump has an appropriate description — the deep state.

Just a cursory example would show that in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, 51 percent to 57 percent of government posts were filled by CFR members. It was no less true in the Nixon, Bush and Reagan administrations. They are so embedded in the political structural sinews of the US government that some decisions, for example, the one that brought about the "Iran hostage crisis" resulting in the downfall of the Carter administration, was an offshoot of CFR bigwigs advising the US president to allow the admission of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the US for hospital treatment of his cancer.

CPIFA

The Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs is not, strictly speaking, a private organization in the genre of an NGO, similar to the PCFR or CFR. It was established in 1949 by Premier Zhou Enlai during the founding of the People's Republic of China (PROC). Back then, China had just come out of World War II and was just at the tail-end of its civil war, with the defeated leader of the Nationalist Kuomintang government, Chiang Kai-shek, fleeing to Taiwan and supported by the emergent lone hegemon, America.

In the seven decades of its existence, CPIFA was China's sort of window to the outside, navigating what to Beijing was a complicated world dominated by the West while internally constrained by its inward-looking Mao Zedong. Zhou Enlai was a visionary who saw CPIFA as the leading-edge sword to propel China. CPIFA was to take the initiative to establish and maintain relationships with other governments and the world outside, carrying out dialogues and developing bilateral relationships. It was to enhance people-to-people friendship, to facilitate state-to-state relations, and to pursue world peace, development, and cooperation. The tools it used were the exchange mechanisms on "Track 2" diplomacy and the people-to-people (P2P) dialogues by hosting international and regional conferences and forums coupled with diplomatic initiatives. A well-orchestrated and monitored approach to learning and imparting knowledge without being inflicted by the democratic bug of free speech while passing along the virus of a benevolent socialist ideology.

Thus, in the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012, when Xi Jinping assumed the post of general secretary of the CCP, his control of power was total. CPIFA, in this new era of diplomacy, was to make friends for China.

According to its literature, "To date, CPIFA has hosted the visits of over 30,000 guests of 4,000 plus delegations including foreign prestigious statesmen, parliament members, think tanks, media, etc. The institute maintains contact with famous statesmen, diplomats, social activists, entrepreneurs, experts and scholars on international studies from over 120 countries and has established more than 20 bilateral dialogue and exchange mechanisms." And yes, add the Philippine Council on Foreign Relations.

The 11-member PCFR delegation's trip to China could be considered a success in fomenting good relations. But have we moved the needle an inch toward resolving our problems in the WPS? I doubt it. A successful dialogue presupposes a free interchange of ideas — a debate. There was none. The RTD was permeated and impelled by a monolithic viewpoint. It was a series of monologues.

We must learn from this. When our turn comes.000
Read 96 times Last modified on Thursday, 21 November 2024 03:03
Rate this item
(0 votes)
More in this category: « Davao's coming battle royale An assessment of the Beijing P2P »
back to top

Main Menu