Arbitration ruling stirs passions among Chinese, Filipinos

By Zhang Yiqian in Manila, Shan Jie and Huang Ge in Beijing Source:Global Times Published: 2016/7/13 1:33:00

A police officer stands guard in front of the Philippine Embassy in Beijing on Tuesday. The area was surrounded by journalists who were required to get registered and were later cordoned off by the police. Photo: Li Hao/GT



 Chinese people have staged widespread protests against the award of an arbitral tribunal in the South China Sea case filed by the Philippines.

Signs which read, "the South China Sea belongs to China" and the Chinese map, together with links to articles showing what they refer to as historical evidence have flooded Chinese social media platforms such as WeChat and Sina Weibo.

Two hours after the announcement, on Sina Weibo, the topic with hashtag "the South China Sea Arbitration" has already been viewed more than 30 million views with 260,000 comments, while the hashtag "China cannot lose a little bit of land" had 12 million views.

"The Hague international court is ridiculous, it accepts the arbitration appeal that they should not accept, and they challenged history that they should respect," Wu Yuguang, a Chinese student in Germany from Heilongjiang Province, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, many Chinese people have vowed to fight for the country in the event of a military conflict. A 46-year-old resident from Hebei Province, surnamed Ma, told the Global Times that "as a veteran, I would like to follow the call of the country and defend the territorial integrity of China."

An increasing number of vendors who sell snacks from the Philippines on taobao.com, China's largest online shopping platform, also began to boycott the sales of imported Philippine snacks.

"Our online shop will not sell Cebu mangoes from the Philippines and will not sell any snacks imported from the country anymore," a Shanghai-based taobao vendor who declined to be identified, told the Global Times Tuesday.

Another vendor based in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, put a notice on its online shop, saying that "this shop will no longer sell dried mangoes imported from the Philippines and will give any snacks now in stock for free to consumers who provide their address."

The award created a similar atmosphere among Filipinos on Twitter. The topic with the hashtag "CHexit" has garnered 69,200 tweets as of press time. "Good job! Remember, a team of Pinoys worked on this international arbitration case. Galing, grabe. #CHexit," said a twitter user Renzo Blanco.

However, in the Philippines, where a Global Times reporter interviewed people in the streets, most said they hope China and the Philippines can cooperate more, despite the arbitration result.

"There are so many tourists coming to the Philippines from China," one taxi driver told the Global Times. "They are bringing me business."

After the result came out, while waiting for a conference at the Philippine Supreme Court, a reporter told the Global Times that as a Filipino, he supports the government's position, but he doesn't think the two countries should be enemies. He talked about how much trade there is between the two countries and the fact that they are neighbors.

Herman Tiu Laurel, a Chinese-Filipino and host at Global News Network, said that he thinks after the ruling there will be a storm of propaganda against China in the Philippine mainstream media and calls for China to accept the ruling.

"But China will not heed the calls, and there will be pressure on President Rodrigo Duterte from the anti-dialogue faction and the 'International Community' to force China to accept the ruling and implement it," he said.

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Posted in: Diplomacy

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