MANILA — The Philippines should follow the lead of neighboring Cambodia and shut down its online gambling operations, Sen. Franklin Drilon said Thursday, warning of the “social cost” of keeping a multi-billion-peso industry blamed for a rise in kidnapping and other criminal activities.

Phnom Penh pulled the plug on its online gambling industry last year over similar concerns, pleasing Beijing which is also pushing Manila to do the same. Gambling is illegal in China.

“The ban in Cambodia, from available information, is that because the Chinese government objected to it,” Drilon, the Senate's Minority Leader, told government regulators at a Senate hearing.

“Yet we are here, we are acting like a province of China supposedly. So dapat, kung bawal sa Tsina, eh di bawal din dito.”

(So, if it's banned in China, then it should also be banned here.)

Closer ties with Beijing under President Rodrigo Duterte have attracted thousands of Chinese nationals in the country, many of them working in Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs).

A Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. official told senators that “not all players are coming from China.” A company can be closed down if requested by China, said Victor Padilla, of the agency’s licensing department.

“Are we a province of China, na if China says pwede, pwede? Kung walang sinasabing bawal, pwede?” Drilon retorted.

(Are we a province of China, where if China says it's allowed, then we allow it? And if it doesn't say it's prohibited, we allow it?)

Arnold Salvosa, PAGCOR’s legal chief, said a Chinese Embassy statement against POGOs “primarily refers to illegal activities related to online gambling, not necessarily online gambling.”

Drilon then read an English translation of a Chinese police’s statement warning residents in one province that their passports would be cancelled should they engage in “telecommunications scams and POGO gambling.”

“To us, the policy should be to terminate these POGO operations because of all these nefarious activities that we hear,” he said.

Sen. Richard Gordon, chairman of the blue ribbon committee, sought a “cost-benefit analysis” of the POGO industry.