Opinion | Little sign of Duterte’s promised ‘separation’ from the US as China-Philippines relations crumble

“In this venue, your honours, I announce my separation from the United States, both in military, not maybe social, but economics also,” Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said during his historic visit to Beijing in 2016. Speaking before his Chinese hosts, the Filipino populist defiantly declared, “America has lost now. I have realigned myself in your ideological flow … It is the only way.”

Five years later, however, there is little sign of “separation” between the Philippines and the US, its century-old ally. Meanwhile, bilateral relations with China have become increasingly contentious amid festering disputes in the South China Sea. 

The recent stand-off over the Whitsun Reef, a contested land feature in the Spratly Islands, has exposed the fragility of Duterte’s pivot to China. By all indications, the Philippines is tilting back into America’s embrace while Duterte’s successors could struggle to maintain similarly friendly relations with China.

Duterte’s victory in the 2016 presidential election upended the country’s foreign and defence policy. In an unprecedented departure, he signalled a new era of “independent” foreign policy by diversifying the Philippines’ external relations away from Washington in favour of alternative powers.

Pleased by Duterte’s strategic recalibration, China offered US$24 billion in investment, including infrastructure projects on Duterte’s home island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. China also relaxed restrictions on Philippine fishing vessels’ access to the contested Scarborough Shoal, a land feature located within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone but under Beijing’s administrative control since 2012.