FRANCISCO S. TATAD
AFTER Chinese President Xi Jinping left Manila on Wednesday, I sat down with some homegrown analysts to assess the impact of his two-day visit. They were one in saying that Xi scored big with his charm and money offensive, and that the United States, China’s Pacific rival, will have to do much, much more to match his initiative. Until President Rodrigo Duterte took over, the Philippines had been almost entirely an American preserve. Today, it is derisively referred to as a “Chinese province,” and the 29 agreements signed during the visit, capped by a joint oil and gas exploration agreement on the contested South China (West Philippine) waters, seem to prove it.