Manila protests ‘racist’ portrayal of Filipinos in China Daily videos

Philippines lodges protest over China Daily videos depicting Filipinos as monkeys

MANILA — The Philippines has lodged a diplomatic protest with China over what it called the “racist depiction” of Filipinos in a series of videos published by state-backed newspaper China Daily, amid deep-seated tensions over sovereignty in the South China Sea.

The videos, which depicted Filipinos as monkeys, went “beyond political debate” and resorted to “demeaning, dehumanizing, and racist depictions of Filipinos,” the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday, as reported by Al Jazeera. The BBC reported that Manila condemned the “dehumanising and racist” portrayal of the country as a timid monkey strong-armed by the US and Japan to take Beijing on over the South China Sea.

According to the BBC, China Daily posted an AI-generated video last week featuring a monkey in a Filipino shirt. The clip shows the monkey screaming as arms bearing Japanese and US flags shove it onto a rickety karaoke stage set up in a boat. After being scolded for singing the wrong song, the monkey pulls out a sheet reading “South China Sea arbitration award,” is then flung into the sea, and blasted by a water cannon. The video, posted on 10 July, remains on China Daily’s Facebook page at time of writing, the BBC said.

The videos were published as part of a series marking the 10th anniversary of the 2016 South China Sea arbitral award, in which an international tribunal ruled overwhelmingly in favour of the Philippines and found that China’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea had no legal basis under international law, according to Al Jazeera. Beijing has rejected the ruling and continues to assert sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, where tensions have remained high, Al Jazeera added.

Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Maria Theresa Lazaro raised the issue directly with China’s ambassador to the country, while the department also lodged a formal diplomatic protest condemning the videos, Al Jazeera reported. Its embassy in Beijing separately published an open letter addressed to the editor of China Daily, flagging the outlet for “breach of editorial norms and principles” and urging the publication to “uphold dignity, respect, and truth” in public discourse.

China Daily describes itself as China’s most-read English-language newspaper, with a combined audience of more than 470 million people and more than 110 million followers on Facebook, where the videos were shared, according to Al Jazeera.

The Philippine defence ministry called the video “contemptible propaganda”, saying it “exposes the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of China’s propaganda machine,” the BBC reported. Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said: “The recent spate of schizophrenic behaviour of the Chinese Communist Party is too clear to disregard or ignore.”

Manila’s foreign ministry demanded that the clip be removed, saying: “Disagreement over legal and political issues does not justify resorting to disturbing imagery, which has no place in the civil public discourse of a responsible state.” It added: “Such imagery and misinformation only serve to widen the distrust between the Philippines and China,” as reported by the BBC.

The dispute centres on features including the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal (known as Huangyan Island in China), a little more than 100 miles (160km) from the Philippines and 500 miles from China, the BBC said. The Chinese Coast Guard routinely uses high-pressure water cannons against Philippine vessels in the disputed shoals, which have led to damage and injuries, the broadcaster reported. At the centre of tensions between Manila and Beijing are these features, with tense stand-offs and occasional violent confrontations between Philippine and Chinese vessels in the disputed waters growing in recent years.

The South China Sea is estimated to hold 11 billion barrels of untapped oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to one report cited by Al Jazeera. The Philippines has received diplomatic backing from the United States and other allies in the ongoing dispute, Al Jazeera reported.