Not the First Time the Philippines has been treated with contempt

China Daily’s artificial intelligence-generated video—a monkey in a barong and salakot taking orders from hands sleeved in American and Japanese flags, blasted by a water cannon, with the 2016 arbitral ruling dismissed as “litter”—is offensive, racist, and beneath the dignity of any nation that aspires to regional leadership.

Yet it is also unoriginal. Filipinos have been here before.

The Spaniards called us indios. American colonial propaganda portrayed us as monkeys, apes, or savages incapable of self-government. The Japanese occupation dispensed with such paternalism and resorted instead to the brutal language of military domination. The labels and methods differed. The psychology behind them did not: the belief that power confers superiority and weakness invites condescension. These are the enduring residues of empire: sometimes linguistic, sometimes physical, always rooted in the conceit that might confers right.

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In truth, the video posted on China Daily’s Facebook page on July 10 told us little that Chinese actions in the West Philippine Sea have not already communicated. Conduct often reveals prejudice more plainly than words ever could.

What makes the episode particularly ironic is that modern China was itself a victim of foreign domination and humiliation. George Orwell’s ”Animal Farm” distilled a pattern that recurs across history: the oppressed of yesterday can become the oppressor of today. Nations, like individuals, are not automatically ennobled by suffering. Sometimes they merely inherit the instruments of power and repeat familiar mistakes.

The irony deepens further. If China insists on invoking monkeys, it should remember its own literary heritage. Sun Wukong, the Monkey King in “Journey to the West,” is not a symbol of stupidity. He is a symbol of wit, resilience, adaptability, and defiance of arbitrary authority. By reaching for the monkey as an insult, China Daily’s propagandists inadvertently invoked one of the most beloved rebels in their own civilization.

But the larger lesson lies not in what China thinks of us. It lies in what we choose to become.

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Every generation of Filipinos has confronted some version of the same question: Why does our country so often become the object of intimidation, manipulation, or disdain by stronger powers? The answer cannot simply be outrage—outrage fades. The more durable response is national introspection. What kind of country are we building? What kind of people do we aspire to become? Respect is defended through diplomacy and law, but it is secured, ultimately, through national capability: strong institutions, economic vitality, educational excellence, technological competence, and civic maturity.

China Daily’s video deserves condemnation. It also deserves indifference.

History has shown that nations which resort to caricature have usually run out of better arguments. The Philippines does not need to out-insult them. It needs to out-build them—to become a nation that commands respect rather than merely demanding it, whose dignity no caricature can diminish, and whose achievements no propaganda can erase.

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Nolivienne C. Ermitaño,

nolivienne@gmail.com

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