Duterte’s ‘pivot’ to China offers a reminder that all Asian diplomacy should be guided by subtlety and care

Any history of the US impact on the Philippines would greatly suffer from rendition in short form; but the relationship has had its ups and downs, and now we have a serious downer period in that bumpy history. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-American tantrum may seem Trumpian in its primitivism but, even so, the clear winner in this round of Asia’s geopolitical “dating game” is China.

We should not be surprised. The central global political fact of our times is the gravitational pull of growing China, all but destined to become the Asian superpower. It will not be easily resisted. Wake up, Americans. It’s the 21st century, not the 20th.

Master class: how China has stolen US thunder on world stage

And so now you have the Philippines. With the finesse of a dump truck, one day Duterte decides to drop Uncle Sam in order to embrace the inheritors of Mao’s China – now profiting from a quasi-market system that more and more seems to resemble that of the political one-party Taiwan of the 1990s. Visiting China, Duterte declaims for all the world to hear: “America has lost now”. “I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow,” he told his Chinese hosts.

The mainland’s success with state-guided marketisation provides the goodies for the likes of Duterte’s Philippines. From his perspective, China can offer his country more than the US. Let’s face it: Uncle Sam no longer has the wherewithal to be Santa Claus to everyone, all the time – as in the grand old days of goodies for all.

Is there risk for Duterte? The obvious would be that were China to invade the Philippines tomorrow, Washington might look the other way – but China doesn’t need to invade anyone. Its inherent size and growing presence will ineluctably pull its neighbours closer to it, one degree of reduced separation after another. Osmosis rather than offensiveness will suffice.