What do Vietnamese or Filipinos think of the South China Sea dispute?

Woodpecker

 

Former a lover of literature and history.

Both Vietnam and the Philippines were worrying about the ownership of the sea they border because China wants to own the entire sea.

Israel Nicolas

15+ years studying Philippine History8y

What do Vietnamese or Filipinos think of the South China Sea dispute?

At the risk of oversimplifying things, this is the popular sentiment the Filipinos...

Why is the Chinese in our backyard? We never had a border with them!

And in this perspective, this reaction is genuine and damning.

The Philippines is a maritime country. All of its islands is protected/surrounded by the sea. Of course we have maritime borders with Malaysia and Indonesia and you can see its proximity.

As an ASEAN country and as part of the region, the Philippines has an affinity to both these countries. The people from Sulu and some parts of Sabah, Malaysia speak the same language. There is also an Indonesian island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miangas

) a few hundred miles away from Mindanao where its Indonesian citizens take a boat to the nearest large city in Mindanao and shop there. They are all what is considered normal border relations (China should know as it is the country with the most borders.)

Now China... here is how the Philippines look at China.

All fine right?

The Philippines have never in their history looked at China as a country that it borders. Ever. To Filipinos, China is a far away land. A land of great civilization and a billion people, but a far away land nonetheless.

The Filipinos in general do not care about the technicalities of the EEZ or what islands which country occupies or not. That is left to the international courts and to negotiations.

But then if you show Filipinos the nine dash line and they see this..

Look at how close the line is from the Philippine islands. Look at the island of Palawan and how the line almost touches it.

Suddenly we have Chinese neighbors on the border! Where are they?

In short, China as a country bordering the Philippines is not a reality to us at all. So it can come down to, what are they doing here?

That is why the dispute with the Philippines cannot be settled, because as far as the Philippines and the average Filipino is concerned. There is no border to dispute! In fact there is no Wikipedia entry titled China-Philippine border because no such concept exists.

This is not like any other border dispute between China and X country where there is a give and take, and everyone is happy (as the Chinese say win-win). To the Philippines and the Filipinos it is a question of, what are they doing here?

Rightly or wrongly, this is the general sentiment of the Filipinos.