Perspectives on Philippine Policy Towards China. Chinese Studies (review)

370 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 Theresa C. Cariño and Bernardita R. Churchill, editors. Perspectives on Philippine Policy Towards China. Chinese Studies, vol. 4. New Manila, Quezon City: Philippine Association for Chinese Studies, 1993. iii, 79 pp. Paperback $4.00, isbn 971-91333-1-7. On 9 June 1975, President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos of the Republic of the Philippines (RP) signed a joint communiqué with Premier Zhou En-lai ofthe People's Republic of China (PRC). That international executive agreement recognized Beijing as the "sole legal government of China." But on 25 June 1975, Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Jose D. Ingles cautioned the RP Consular and Diplomatic Corps that the joint communiqué was "not an effort to turn our backs on old friends."' And the RP did not turn its back. Twelve years later, in his 11 September 1987 briefing for the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives , Dr. Ingles noted that the RP had "intensified . . . exchanges with Taiwan , but as our relations with Peking [sic] require, on an unofficial basis." Ingles went on to urge that the Department of Foreign Affairs "exercise closer supervision of the Philippines' contacts with Taiwan."2 Political ferment in the RP, PRC, and Taiwan during the 1980s transformed Manila's relations with both governments. Although Artikulo 18, Seksyon 4, ofthe RP's 1987 Konstitusyon permits reexamination of martial law-era international agreements, formal Senate review is only one way ofmodifying foreign policy in the RP. Governmental and business initiatives acknowledging Taipei's political and economic power are another. By the early 1990s, only a "thin constituency" of"technical experts" articulately advocated the pristine one-China policy (Segundo E. Romero, Jr., in Perspectives on Philippine Policy Towards China, pp. 49, 50). "Recent political reform and economic dynamism in Taiwan" and "diplomatic setbacks" for Beijing after its 1989 suppression ofpro-democracy activists, Romero informs us, "have unsettled the Philippines' strict adherence to the One-China' policy" (p. 51). Selective indifference by RP officials toward the 1975 joint communiqué continues beyond examples cited in Perspectives on Philippine Policy Towards China. On Double Ten Day, 1995, Arturo Enrile, RP Armed Forces Chief of Staff, joined Taipei's highest-ranking diplomat in the Philippines by offering a public toast to the Republic of China on Taiwan. Reflecting dissensus within the broader foreign policy polyarchy, no representative of the Department of Foreign Affairs accomy tversi y panied them on the dais.3 Just as Indonesia's Suharto apparently overestimated President Ramos' chances of suppressing a 1994 University of the Philippinesbased forum on East Timor, Beijing's Ministry of Foreign Affairs must be perofHawai 'i Press Reviews 371 plexed trying to predict the next overture from nongovernmental organizations, business people, or nationally elected senators and vice presidents in the Philippines toward their Taipei counterparts. Perspectives on Philippine Policy originated in a 1992 roundtable organized by the RP Department ofForeign Affairs with the Philippine Association for Chinese Studies. The book's perceptive and stimulating essays deserve attention from China scholars, comparativists, and international relations specialists. In fairness to the editors, the book is social science in service to a government. Understandably , expectations for multiauthored books vary, but one could have tightened the linkages between the volume's constituent parts and made them more accessible to readers not sharing the roundtable participants' agenda. To bridge the eclectic epistemic gaps, the editors might have asked the six authors (one—Cariño— doubles as a coeditor) to explicate basic assumptions and to respond to related analytic questions. Alternatively, to elevate points ofdivergence and potential engagement from subliminality, the inclusion ofheuristic excerpts from the roundtable discussion might have highlighted tension and debate among the contributors . Instead, Churchill and Cariño simply synopsize chapters seriatim (pp. i-iii). Intended to elaborate "various aspects" ofRP-PRC relations "in the context of the current regional and international situation as well as the announced foreign policy objectives ofthe . . . administration ofPresident Fidel V. Ramos" (p. i), the loosely linked chapters ofthis multiauthored volume deserve a coherent theoretical framework. To highlight some of the enduring contributions of Philippine Perspectives on China Policy, this reviewer suggests that precedent, presidential initiative, and pluralization—or the absence...