The Philippines has formally protested to the Chinese government over an AI-generated video created by Chinese state media that depicts its citizens as monkeys, calling the depiction “racist.”
The bizarre 58-second video, posted online by state newspaper China Daily on July 10, shows a monkey dressed in traditional Filipino clothing being forced by the United States and Japan to parrot an arbitration award handed down by a court in The Hague in 2016. The arbitral award ruled that China’s extensive maritime claims in the South China Sea are invalid under international maritime law.
When the monkey refused to comply with the US and Japan’s demands, it was thrown into the sea and shot with high-pressure water cannons by the Chinese Coast Guard, before the whale surfaced and described the arbitration award as “garbage”.
In a characteristically candid statement, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said the video provided “a clear insight into what the Chinese Communist Party thinks about the Filipino people.”
“This mockery of a legitimate 2016 arbitral award and a video glorifying violence against Filipino citizens and soldiers exposes the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of China’s propaganda machine,” he said.
Screenshot of an AI-generated video produced by China Daily. (diplomat)
In a separate statement, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced that Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Leo Herrera Lim met with Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan yesterday and conveyed the government’s “firm opposition” to a series of “offensive” cartoons and videos published by China Daily regarding the arbitration award.
“The ministry then issued a formal diplomatic protest condemning the video and cartoon, noting that China Daily resorted to degrading, dehumanizing and racist depictions of Filipinos, going beyond legitimate political debate,” the ministry said.
It warned that such content would “only spread mistrust between the two countries,” and called for the material to be “immediately deleted.” It claims to have also sent this request to the editor-in-chief of China Daily in Beijing.
Last week, the Philippines recently marked the 10th anniversary of the South China Sea arbitration award that marked the end of a lawsuit it filed against China in 2013 after a standoff over Scarborough Shoal. On July 12, 2016, the Arbitration Court in The Hague issued a verdict in favor of most of the Philippines’ claims. In particular, it found that China’s vast nine-dash line, which claims China’s sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, has no status under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which both countries are signatories to.
Last week, 14 countries issued a joint statement supporting the ruling, saying it was “final and legally binding” and rejecting any “destabilizing” actions in the disputed waters. The 27-nation European Union also issued a statement reaffirming the ruling as a “landmark decision in the peaceful resolution of conflicts.”
The Chinese government refused to accept the award and declared it “invalid”. Ten years later, the Chinese coast guard continues to threaten Philippine vessels in disputed waters, with a series of skirmishes in international waters in which Chinese coast guard vessels rammed Philippine ships and fired high-pressure water cannons at them.
The AI-generated monkey video was produced by a news organization and gave Beijing a degree of plausible deniability, but it accurately sums up China’s tendency to view the Philippines and its actions as a product of US policy. In this view, the Marcos administration’s recent efforts to prevent Chinese incursions into Manila’s exclusive economic zone stem from Washington machinations rather than from legitimate security concerns.
While it is true that resolving the South China Sea dispute is undoubtedly complicated by the geopolitical competition between the United States and China, treating the Philippines as a proxy of the United States does little to advance a peaceful resolution of the South China Sea dispute. In fact, the feeling of alienation between the two neighboring countries is rapidly deepening.
