China’s diplomatic thought of peaceful coexistence has laid the solid foundation for the effective building of a harmonious global community with a shared future for the entire humanity. Peaceful coexistence is all the more relevant in the context of Philippines-China relations.

The challenging bilateral relations between China and the Philippines over territorial disputes and maritime jurisdictional conflicts in the South China Sea have regrettably created an environment of security anxieties not only between the two countries but also among the littoral states of this contested maritime domain. This is sad to admit considering that China and the Philippines were very peaceful and friendly neighbors for more than a thousand of years prior to Western colonial control of Asia.

The South China Sea was not the sea that divided the Chinese and Filipinos but an important maritime bridge that deeply connected the two peoples. The South China Sea was the vital umbilical cord that strongly linked the lives of Chinese and Filipinos who have peacefully coexisted for mutual benefits for more than a millennium.

During the age of the antiquity, Chinese and Filipinos shared a common past, collective experiences, and mutual prosperity enabled by the maritime richness of the South China Sea. Both the Chinese and the Filipinos were sovereign people peacefully coexisting while enjoying the bounties of the South China Sea for their common development. Filipinos never viewed the Chinese as aggressive invaders but important compassionate traders. Sailing through the rough and calm waters of the South China Sea, the Chinese landed on the Philippine archipelagos not to fight and control using arms and ammunitions but to be friends in order to promote commerce with the inhabitants of the archipelago by offering porcelains, silver wares, and Chinese foods.

But the advent of the modern era changed the course of history between the Chinese and Filipinos. Invaded by Spain that had the intention of also intruding China, Filipinos were colonized, Catholicized and Westernized for 333 years. These three centuries of subjugation and exploitation under Spain imposed a worldview that was Western-centric that........

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