Asian Angle | Taho-gate has stained Duterte’s Philippines-China love affair
- The humiliation of a Filipino law enforcer at the hands of a Chinese student is about more than a flying sweet pudding
- It symbolises how a once strong relationship between two countries is turning increasingly sour
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. A single, seemingly trivial, incident can trigger a cascade of reactions that expose long-simmering tensions and prompt far-reaching consequences.
This is particularly true in geopolitics. As Barabara Tuchman masterfully demonstrated in The Guns of August (1962), the first world war was the destructive upshot of a confluence of personal miscalculations and trivial mistakes. What is most frightening is that no one intended it, and no one saw it coming.
The Filipino president’s tireless pursuit of rapprochement with Beijing has, paradoxically, only reinforced anti-China sentiments in his country. A recent incident, involving a 23-year-old Chinese national publicly insulting a Filipino law enforcer, only underscores the danger lurking over the horizon.
The incident took place reportedly after a lowly Filipino officer, Willam Cristobel, reminded the Chinese national, Jiale Zhang, of a rule against bringing drinks on to the metro system.