Over the weekend, China’s Vice Premier Wang Yang came to the Philippines as the highest-ranking Chinese official to visit the country during the Duterte administration. He came with a package of grants, loans and deals reportedly worth up to $6 billion, covering Philippine agricultural exports to China, and 15 infrastructure development plans, including those for bridges, railway systems, irrigation and a hydroelectric dam.

During the Vice Premier’s visit, National Economic and Development Authority Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia and Chinese Commerce Vice Minister Fu Ziying signed in Davao City a Six-Year Development Program (SYDP) covering all trade and economic cooperation agreements between the Philippines and China. Letters were also exchanged between the two, formalizing agreements on the conduct of feasibility studies for a Davao City expressway and a Pany-Guimaras-Negros Island bridges project.

Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez said, that with the new deals, China is looking to become the Philippines’s biggest trading partner in the coming years, with two-way trade between the Philippines and China rising to $2.05 billion in January 2017.

These deals on the surface look positively promising, marking the warming of ties between the Philippines and China.

Overshadowing these pronouncements are powerful headline news that Chinese ships reconnoitered and surveyed the Benham Rise – the 13-million-hectare undersea region off the coasts of Aurora and Isabela that is home to rich marine resources (and possibly abundant mineral and gas deposits). The area was declared by the United Nation in 2012 to be part of the country’s extended continental shelf (ECS) and under its full jurisdiction.

About the same time, the mayor of Sansha Prefecture (newly created political unit with jurisdiction over the Spratlys, Paracels and other islands China claims to be its own) announced plans to build an “environmental monitoring station” on Scarborough or Panatag Shoal (Bajo de Masinloc), some 230 kilometers off the coast of Zambales, well within the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the Philippines and Filipinos’ traditional fishing grounds. In fact, National Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana disclosed to the media over the weekend that he had received reports Chinese barges were already prepared to start reclamation efforts in the area last June, but for some reason did not push through.

Panatag Shoal was forcibly taken over by Chinese ships in 2012, and blockaded Filipino fishermen from Zambales and Pangasinan.

Beijing has grabbed and now weaponized all the islets in the Spratlys, building hangars, runways, radar stations and missile batteries. The construction of a monitoring station on Panatag Shoal would give the Chinese full radar coverage over the entire South China Sea, allow them to setup and enforce an air defense identification zone, and effectively control who and what goes through the highly strategic area, according to Justice Antonio T. Carpio.

This is nothing short of the encirclement of the Philippine Archipelago. And, if allowed unopposed, China would occupy the commanding heights in both the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean—spanning one of the longest North to South longitudinal distances of strategic importance.

The resulting militarization, as Carpio has timely pointed out, virtually places our country under Beijing boots and surrounds the country from East to West, and North to South. The Filipinos’ future source of food and energy would be gravely imperiled, not to mention our sovereign rights to the regions.

And for what? Our country’s top leadership seems content with expressions of friendship and lengthy volumes of promises of aid in return for the unacceptably high price we are paying.

E-mail: [email protected]