A convoluted anti-China narrative

A COUPLE of Chinese business executives were kidnapped and killed in the country late June 2024. These killings, coupled with a high-tension maritime dispute in the South China Sea, according to the South China Morning Post, may have caused "Chinese nationals considering business travel or physical investments in the Philippines... [to] hold back until they feel it is safer, according to analysts and merchants."

My colleague and fellow historian based in Jakarta, Indonesia, Prof. Ferdinand Philip Victoria, had an interesting observation on the reactions of his social media network to the killings. He noticed an air of schadenfreude among a number of Filipinos regarding the crime, a sense of payback for the water cannon and axe-hacking incidents in Ayungin Shoal. Curiously, he likened the current situation as a significantly scaled-down version of the shrill atmosphere within the Spanish colonial government of the 17th century concerning the large numbers of Chinese immigrants in the country.