The situation in Asia Pacific generally and in the South China Sea in particular is explosive. There are several actors and tensions involved, including between the Philippines and China. When last year Philippines President Benigno Aquino compared China’s stance in the South China Sea to that of Nazi Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia before the outbreak of World War II, it was inappropriate, irresponsible and inflammatory. To have done so again, in a speech in Tokyo on Wednesday 3rd June, borders on the incredulous. Aquino should certainly refrain from such comparisons in the future.

For starters the dynamics of the South China Sea are extremely complex. I recently read The South China Sea by Bill Hayton, sub-titled, The Struggle for Power in Asia. It is absolutely outstanding, fascinating, based on extensive research and very well-written. It underlines in detail the immense historical, legal, economic and environmental complexities that the South China Sea poses. To compare the South China Sea to the Sudetenland displays amazing ignorance, worrying on the part of the head of State of one of the countries concerned. The situation requires cool-heads, not saber-rattling hot-heads. Had he read Bill Hayton’s work Aquino would not have made such asinine remarks. The comparison of Nazi Germany and China is absurd and bears no scrutiny. Xi Jinping is no Hitler and the South China Sea is not the Sudetenland.

As inappropriate, irresponsible and inflammatory as the comparison was in the first place, repeating it in Tokyo in the presence of hawkish Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is like bringing a match to one of the Asia Pacific’s potentially most explosive power kegs. Abe has been energetically revisionist in his approach to the history of Japan’s wars and invasions of China. Calling the Chinese Nazis will obviously delight one who wants the world to forget that actually in World War II Nazi Germany was Japan’s close ally.

Had Aquino read a bit more history he would have found that it was the Japanese, not the Chinese, who invaded and occupied the Philippines from 1942 to 1945, who killed, tortured and raped – and forcibly recruited thousands of Philippine women as sex slaves, what the Japanese euphemistically call “ianfu” (comfort women), into Japanese military run brothels (see illustration below). It was also the Japanese, not the Chinese, who ordered the 1942 Bataan Death March, in which thousands died from exhaustion, starvation, malaria and maltreatment. The Chinese died in the millions, both soldiers in battlefields and innocent civilians, seeking to prevent the world (including the Philippines) from being dominated and ruled by the Japan-Nazi Germany alliance.

Perhaps Aquino’s intention in making his inflammatory populist remarks was in the hope of distracting the attention of the Philippino people away from the poor economic and governance performance of the country’s leadership and elites over decades. The Philippines is an extreme case of a country with very high promise – estimated by the World Bank in the 1950s, among others, to become the star economy of East Asia – and abysmal performance. Aquino’s attitude to China may be one of unhealthy envy. In 1980 the Philippines GDP per capita ($1,868) was six-times that of China ($302); by this year China’s ($13, 800) is four-times that of the Philippines ($4,062). (source: IMF) Need one say more?

The Philippines: From Poster Child to Sick Child

South Korea is a country that had virtually nothing going for it, objective conditions were stark, but it achieved tremendous social, economic and political developments and transformations. GDP per capita in 1980 ($2184) was just a little bit higher than the Philippines; today ($38,000) it is more than nine-times higher. The Philippines is the opposite narrative to that of Korea: a country that had everything going for it – natural resources, a comparatively high level of education and huge amount of aid from the US. Its failure is as unexpected and as remarkable as Korea’s success.

Much of the rot can be ascribed to the twenty-year dictatorial rule (1965-1986) of Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda (see illustration below) and their cronies. Asia Pacific is (or at least was) characterized by authoritarian rule, but whereas a number of the other authoritarian rulers – Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Park Chung-hee of South Korea, Suharto of Indonesia, Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, and, of course, Deng Xiaoping of China and his successors – brought high economic growth and social development, the Philippines under Marcos stagnated. In the 2008 report of the Commission for Growth and Development 13 economies are identified as having achieved sustained 7% average annual growth for 25 years over the period 1950 to 2005, out of which 9 are from Asia Pacific – China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand: the Philippines is conspicuous by its absence.

In the closing years of the Marcos era I remember hearing a speech in Manila by Jaime Ongpin, a leading figure of the opposition, who later became Finance Minister in the government of President Cory Aquino (Benigno’s mother). The Philippines he argued needed fundamental reforms in three key areas: political, economic, and social. Political reform, he went on to say, could be achieved quickly with the overthrow of the Marcos cronyist regime. The economic reform would require abandoning big prestige industrial projects, for which the Marcos era was noteworthy, while concentrating instead on agrarian reform and promotion of the small-and-medium-sized sector. That he said would take a decade. The third reform required a transformation of social attitudes of the elites. That would take a generation.

The political reform came, but not the other two. There has been some rural reform but vanishingly pale in comparison with what was undertaken in Korea, or indeed China. Now that a generation has passed since the fall of Marcos, the profound social reform remains stillborn. The Philippino people have to sacrifice happiness and family in order to find work overseas. Foreign remittances are the country’s major source of revenue.

[I might add a personal note here. The Philippines is a country for which I have great affection. My mother was born in Manila and though after her father died in the 1920s she and her mother returned to Spain, I often went to the Philippines in my childhood, and also later for professional reasons. I have many Philippino friends. The affection clearly affects the frustration I feel in witnessing this country performing so far below its potential.]

Instead of giving irresponsible a-historical speeches, Aquino should concentrate on making the Philippines, like South Korea, an economic, social and environmental success story which its population so much deserves. (To be fair the Philippines economy has marginally improved during his administration, but it is far from being sustained and there remains a great deal of social injustice.)

Perspectives on the South China Sea

If there is to be World War III, the South China Sea (see map below) could be a major candidate location where the spark that triggers the war occurs. It is, as I stressed, highly complex. The conflicts are not just about resources, oil, fishing rights, or even security – if only things were so simple! The conflicts are also about history, about national identity and pride and about symbols.

It is also perhaps the epicenter of the confrontation between two worldviews – the US and China. The Chinese view is that just as the US achieved its rise to great power status in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by securing control over its backyard and transforming the Caribbean into an American lake, before expanding to the rest of the world; China, as it rises to become a great global power in the 21st century, is now seeking to ensure stability and control in its backyard, including by transforming the South China Sea into a Chinese lake. The American view is to maintain its hegemonic strategic position in Asia Pacific.

China, given its size, its history, its humiliation at the hands of Western and Japanese imperialism, but also its past and contemporary achievements, naturally aspires to becoming one of the world’s great powers in the 21st century. In doing so Chinese thought leaders have sought to stress that China’s rise, unlike that of the Western erstwhile imperialist great powers and in stark contrast to its East Asian neighbor Japan, will be peaceful. Unlike preceding rising great powers, they insist, China will not resort to war and imperialism.

If China succeeds in becoming a great global power peacefully, it will be the first nation in history ever to have done so. Whether it succeeds or fails will of course depend very much on Chinese internal dynamics, but also on the acts and words of other nations, especially its neighbors, such as the Philippines, and the US. It will be the dominant narrative of the 21st century.