Aileen S. P. Baviera: 1959–2020

When Prof. Aileen Baviera passed away on 21 March 2020, many of the heartwarming tributes—including those by Time Magazine (Leung 2020) and the New York Times (Paddock 2020)—largely identified her as a China specialist. She was not just a China expert, however. She had diverse interests, was expansive in her outlook, and could often play off different perspectives against each other (cf. Baviera 2013a). Nevertheless, that multiplicity did have a singular foundation. If she studied China, the ASEAN, and the South China Sea disputes, she did so to uphold Philippine sovereignty. Advancing the Philippines's foreign relations was the core interest that drove her professional and academic life.

A member of the Board of Advisers of the Philippine Navy, Professor Baviera had a "strong sense of patriotism" and an unwavering "commitment to serve our beloved country" (Nepomuceno 2020). She was alert to its security challenges (Baviera 1998) and ever keen to articulate and promote the country's interests (Baviera 2016–2017). Trying to raise awareness of the West Philippine Sea disputes, she cowrote a primer on the issue "from a Filipino perspective" (Baviera and Batongbacal 2013, [v]). Also, although

During an interview with Michael D. Pante (2019), 11 February 2019, Loyola Heights, Quezon City

foreign policy is crafted at the higher echelons of power, she never lost sight of its "stakeholders." She spoke with fishermen, energy players, and law enforcement and maritime personnel to know how they saw and were affected by the territorial disputes (Baviera 2016d). This engagement epitomized her inclusive approach to foreign policy analysis, if not policy making, one that integrated government, civil society, academe, and the general public.

Foreign relations do not come readily to mind when one speaks of Philippine studies and seem to take a back seat in the minds of many Filipinos. But the more I read Professor Baviera's works, the more I appreciate the subject, which is no less vital than the country's "domestic" concerns, i.e., history, politics, and culture. With the Philippines's closer engagement with China, along with its ties to the US, East Asia, and the ASEAN, understanding basic foreign policy issues and avoiding simplistic analyses thereof are more urgent than ever. And who could be the better guide to the subject than Professor Baviera herself?

She graduated with a degree in BS Foreign Policy from the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman in 1979 (Baviera 2013b) and later worked at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) (Baviera 2016a). Studying in China from 1981 to 1983, she earned her MA in Asian Studies in 1987 from the UP Asian Center; she obtained her PhD in Political Science in 2003, also from UP Diliman. She did some civil society work from the late 1980s to the end of the 1990s. In 1993 she was head of research for the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies, serving there until 1998 to work full time in UP Diliman. At the FSI she learned firsthand the workings of actual foreign policy making, which gave an insider's perspective to her scholarship. She was an adviser to Amb. Rodolfo Severino (1936–2019) (Baviera 2019a), who played a key role in the Philippines's response to China's occupation of Mischief Reef in 1995.

Her first publications in the early 1990s, and those since then, sought to understand China, especially its foreign policy (cf. Baviera 1991a); highlight the impact of developments in China on Manila (cf. Baviera 1991b, 1992, 2002); and articulate the Philippines's position in light of regional and global developments (e.g., ASEAN affairs). A glance at her CV—as it stood in 2013—would prove that these cited sources are not the only ones she wrote on these topics (Baviera 2013b). Spanning three decades, these writings provide the much-needed historical context of Manila–Beijing relations today. They help us grasp the evolution of this relationship—and her responses thereto— since the end of the Cold War. This period covers the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, China's occupation of Mischief Reef...