President Duterte ‘recalibrates’ our China policy

AT a two-hour online video forum last Saturday with Ambassador to China Jose Santiago “Chito” Santa Romana, convened by the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations, or PCFR, this writer asked how Beijing regarded the increasingly assertive recent statements of Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr.

Sta. Romana is immensely knowledgeable on China, having lived there since their group of visiting Filipino leftists got stranded by the declaration of martial law in the Philippines nearly four decades ago this month. He was also Beijing news bureau chief for the American Broadcasting Corp., or ABC, covering the People’s Republic for 21 years till he retired from the network in 2010.