QUOTE
Anti-Chinese cracks in Philippine rice bowls
By Donald Kirk
MANILA - Ask a woman named Cora why these days she has to spend so much more for rice for her food stand and family and she's got a fast racial response. "The Chinese are the ones," she said without hesitation. "They are handling all these things. They are the capitalists of the Philippines."
Shopping for the lowest prices in one of Manila's traditional markets, Cora blames "seven names" - the names of the Filipino-Chinese merchants who are widely accused of hoarding rice in order to reap higher and higher profits by driving up prices.
"They are trying to sell the rice at the highest price," she said, even as President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's government has promised to crack down on hoarding, in hopes of staving off both a
looming rice shortage in a country now swollen to 90 million people and ethnic tensions against the minority ethnic Chinese merchant class.
Searches by agencies such as the National Bureau of Investigation, the National Food Authority and the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group appear, however, to have barely scratched the surface of what is a perennial problem here. For Filipinos, rice is a thrice-daily staple - devoured three times a day, that is, by those with enough money to buy it.
After discovering what was reported as "thousands of sacks of rice" in more than 100 warehouses in a province north of here, a top intelligence official with the National Bureau of Investigation confessed that his men did not have search warrants and were only "carefully studying" to see "if there are violators".
One favorite scam of rice traders is to repackage 50-kilogram bags that the government distributes to poor areas at nearly half the current price of 32 pesos, or US$0.80, per kilogram. Investigators discovered just one warehouse implicated in the racket - next to none compared with the scores of warehouses believed to be involved in such rackets routinely.
With her popularity plummeting to about 23%, according to a Pulse Asia poll, Arroyo's worst fear is starvation among those categorized as living in poverty - or one-third of the populace subsisting on less than 80 pesos per day.
Incredibly, the Philippines has not been rice-sufficient since the 1960s despite a "green revolution" in production engineered at the famous rice institute of the University of the Philippines at Los Banos. Some specialists say the "miracle rice" so highly touted 40 years ago is actually less tough than the original variety - and more susceptible to blight and environmental damage from rising pollution in the midst of rapid population growth.
The deficit in rice began to spiral during the 20-year-rule of Ferdinand Marcos, who defeated Arroyo's father, Diosdado Macapagal, the incumbent president, in 1965 and rapidly put a select few "cronies" in charge of the most important segments of the economy. All of them, of course, were of Chinese or mixed-Chinese ancestry, notably Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, the coconut king, and sugar king Roberto Benedicto
The Chinese "invasion", however, goes back centuries to an era when often impoverished Chinese, mostly from the southeastern region, began arriving in search of jobs, trade and money. They were often in cahoots with the Spanish, who ruled the Philippines for more than 300 years until the Americans drove them out in 1898. The Americans, as colonialists, fostered the same comfortable relationships with a ruling elite dominated by the same wealthy Filipinos with Chinese and Spanish ancestry.
It was in this cozy environment that Chinese became the masters of the economy, so much so that a law banning foreigners from owning property in the Philippines is really aimed more at aggressive Chinese than at foreigners from elsewhere. "Without that law, we would have Chinese owning all the shops and homes everywhere," said one Filipino.
As it is, Chinese have controlled the rice trade since the Spanish era - and managed to tighten their grip while Marcos was in power. Chinese control makes them a target of leftist revolt, as seen in an attack last weekend in which guerrillas from the communists' New People's Army torched two trucks and a shop belonging to a leading rice trader on Panay island.
The government fears violence will spread as millions go hungry. To offset the threat, it recently had to sign another contract to import 1.5 million tons of rice from Vietnam, which also has obligations to ship rice to China and elsewhere. That, however, will not be enough to cover the total import needs of more than two million tons, which makes the Philippines the world’s biggest rice importer.
The widespread view that Filipino-Chinese merchants, who are known to control the import and distribution of rice, are hoarding supplies plays into the deepest anti-Chinese sentiments of a country perceived locally to be dominated by "rich Chinese" in just about every area of business and finance.
That age-old view gets at the heart of the complexes of downtrodden Filipinos, who tend to blame "the Chinese" for all their problems, professionally and economically. The fact that millions of Filipinos have Chinese blood somewhere in their near or distant ancestry hardly deters them from singling out those more identifiable as Chinese, from their well-known monosyllabic names to the owners of vast shopping centers, hotels, airlines and other big businesses.
Thus it is that the agriculture secretary, Arthur Yap, is widely perceived to be working with the Chinese, even though Arroyo has "ordered" him to investigate warehouses, to revoke privileges for traders, and to follow trucks carrying rice around the country. "He shall hit the hoarders," as Arroyo put it, without commenting specifically on their ethnicity.
Yap, however, has not helped by suggesting that hungry Filipinos eat less rice. A lot of people "don't really finish their rice", he observed, advising fast-food restaurants to serve half portions. If people would just eat less, he said, the country could reduce rice imports by 37%, from 1.87 million tons last year to 1.17 tonnes this year.
Inevitably Yap's off-the-cuff remark prompted criticism from politicians, to whom the rice crisis is worse than the headline-grabbing scandal of alleged payoffs to Arroyo's husband and others for plotting to skim percentages of contracts, including one for a broadband infrastructure network tendered to a Chinese company worth several hundred million dollars.
The senate president, Manuel Villar, has accused the government of acting slowly, and ineffectively, to go after "the rice cartel". The government, he said, had also failed to cooperate into investigation of scams for profiteering off fertilizer, essential to rice cultivation. "Corruption in areas that directly affect the poor should never be tolerated," he said.
Filipinos accustomed to the sight of well-to-do and middle-class Filipinos gorging themselves at restaurants far beyond the means of most citizens complain that Yap has not been seen in the innumerable shanty towns and rural slums where the majority of people live. At her food stand in a Manila suburb, Cora has a much simpler commentary on Yap's professed desire to stamp out the hoarders.
"He's a Chinese businessman himself," she said. "It's only Arroyo who trusts him. He's working with the Chinese. That's what everyone says." Indeed, Yap is reportedly the son-in-law of one of the country's leading rice traders, a fact that is arousing much criticism among Filipinos long inured to such conflicts of interest.
As for Yap's suggestion that restaurants offer half portions, she responded plaintively, "Filipinos live on rice." She scoffed at his observation that people leave rice on the plate, and pointed out that it clearly was not made on the basis of meals shared with typical Filipinos.
Arroyo, visiting Hong Kong in search of more Chinese foreign investment, said she hopes rice production will increase by 7% this year as the government invests in more irrigation equipment, research and development and seeds. The government may also move to reduce a tariff of 50% still imposed on privately imported rice.
Cora, however, does not put much faith in the government's promises. "The Chinese are buying projects," she said. "They are generating income here - and spending it outside."
In the end, she says, it's only the 10 million or so Filipinos who work overseas, dutifully sending remittances back home, who have bailed out the economy. "They are keeping us alive," she says. "The Chinese are exploiting us as always."
Journalist Donald Kirk is a frequent visitor to the Philippines and is the author of the books Philippines in Crisis: US Power Versus Local Revolt and Looted: The Philippines after the Bases.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
By Donald Kirk
MANILA - Ask a woman named Cora why these days she has to spend so much more for rice for her food stand and family and she's got a fast racial response. "The Chinese are the ones," she said without hesitation. "They are handling all these things. They are the capitalists of the Philippines."
Shopping for the lowest prices in one of Manila's traditional markets, Cora blames "seven names" - the names of the Filipino-Chinese merchants who are widely accused of hoarding rice in order to reap higher and higher profits by driving up prices.
"They are trying to sell the rice at the highest price," she said, even as President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's government has promised to crack down on hoarding, in hopes of staving off both a
looming rice shortage in a country now swollen to 90 million people and ethnic tensions against the minority ethnic Chinese merchant class.
Searches by agencies such as the National Bureau of Investigation, the National Food Authority and the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group appear, however, to have barely scratched the surface of what is a perennial problem here. For Filipinos, rice is a thrice-daily staple - devoured three times a day, that is, by those with enough money to buy it.
After discovering what was reported as "thousands of sacks of rice" in more than 100 warehouses in a province north of here, a top intelligence official with the National Bureau of Investigation confessed that his men did not have search warrants and were only "carefully studying" to see "if there are violators".
One favorite scam of rice traders is to repackage 50-kilogram bags that the government distributes to poor areas at nearly half the current price of 32 pesos, or US$0.80, per kilogram. Investigators discovered just one warehouse implicated in the racket - next to none compared with the scores of warehouses believed to be involved in such rackets routinely.
With her popularity plummeting to about 23%, according to a Pulse Asia poll, Arroyo's worst fear is starvation among those categorized as living in poverty - or one-third of the populace subsisting on less than 80 pesos per day.
Incredibly, the Philippines has not been rice-sufficient since the 1960s despite a "green revolution" in production engineered at the famous rice institute of the University of the Philippines at Los Banos. Some specialists say the "miracle rice" so highly touted 40 years ago is actually less tough than the original variety - and more susceptible to blight and environmental damage from rising pollution in the midst of rapid population growth.
The deficit in rice began to spiral during the 20-year-rule of Ferdinand Marcos, who defeated Arroyo's father, Diosdado Macapagal, the incumbent president, in 1965 and rapidly put a select few "cronies" in charge of the most important segments of the economy. All of them, of course, were of Chinese or mixed-Chinese ancestry, notably Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, the coconut king, and sugar king Roberto Benedicto
The Chinese "invasion", however, goes back centuries to an era when often impoverished Chinese, mostly from the southeastern region, began arriving in search of jobs, trade and money. They were often in cahoots with the Spanish, who ruled the Philippines for more than 300 years until the Americans drove them out in 1898. The Americans, as colonialists, fostered the same comfortable relationships with a ruling elite dominated by the same wealthy Filipinos with Chinese and Spanish ancestry.
It was in this cozy environment that Chinese became the masters of the economy, so much so that a law banning foreigners from owning property in the Philippines is really aimed more at aggressive Chinese than at foreigners from elsewhere. "Without that law, we would have Chinese owning all the shops and homes everywhere," said one Filipino.
As it is, Chinese have controlled the rice trade since the Spanish era - and managed to tighten their grip while Marcos was in power. Chinese control makes them a target of leftist revolt, as seen in an attack last weekend in which guerrillas from the communists' New People's Army torched two trucks and a shop belonging to a leading rice trader on Panay island.
The government fears violence will spread as millions go hungry. To offset the threat, it recently had to sign another contract to import 1.5 million tons of rice from Vietnam, which also has obligations to ship rice to China and elsewhere. That, however, will not be enough to cover the total import needs of more than two million tons, which makes the Philippines the world’s biggest rice importer.
The widespread view that Filipino-Chinese merchants, who are known to control the import and distribution of rice, are hoarding supplies plays into the deepest anti-Chinese sentiments of a country perceived locally to be dominated by "rich Chinese" in just about every area of business and finance.
That age-old view gets at the heart of the complexes of downtrodden Filipinos, who tend to blame "the Chinese" for all their problems, professionally and economically. The fact that millions of Filipinos have Chinese blood somewhere in their near or distant ancestry hardly deters them from singling out those more identifiable as Chinese, from their well-known monosyllabic names to the owners of vast shopping centers, hotels, airlines and other big businesses.
Thus it is that the agriculture secretary, Arthur Yap, is widely perceived to be working with the Chinese, even though Arroyo has "ordered" him to investigate warehouses, to revoke privileges for traders, and to follow trucks carrying rice around the country. "He shall hit the hoarders," as Arroyo put it, without commenting specifically on their ethnicity.
Yap, however, has not helped by suggesting that hungry Filipinos eat less rice. A lot of people "don't really finish their rice", he observed, advising fast-food restaurants to serve half portions. If people would just eat less, he said, the country could reduce rice imports by 37%, from 1.87 million tons last year to 1.17 tonnes this year.
Inevitably Yap's off-the-cuff remark prompted criticism from politicians, to whom the rice crisis is worse than the headline-grabbing scandal of alleged payoffs to Arroyo's husband and others for plotting to skim percentages of contracts, including one for a broadband infrastructure network tendered to a Chinese company worth several hundred million dollars.
The senate president, Manuel Villar, has accused the government of acting slowly, and ineffectively, to go after "the rice cartel". The government, he said, had also failed to cooperate into investigation of scams for profiteering off fertilizer, essential to rice cultivation. "Corruption in areas that directly affect the poor should never be tolerated," he said.
Filipinos accustomed to the sight of well-to-do and middle-class Filipinos gorging themselves at restaurants far beyond the means of most citizens complain that Yap has not been seen in the innumerable shanty towns and rural slums where the majority of people live. At her food stand in a Manila suburb, Cora has a much simpler commentary on Yap's professed desire to stamp out the hoarders.
"He's a Chinese businessman himself," she said. "It's only Arroyo who trusts him. He's working with the Chinese. That's what everyone says." Indeed, Yap is reportedly the son-in-law of one of the country's leading rice traders, a fact that is arousing much criticism among Filipinos long inured to such conflicts of interest.
As for Yap's suggestion that restaurants offer half portions, she responded plaintively, "Filipinos live on rice." She scoffed at his observation that people leave rice on the plate, and pointed out that it clearly was not made on the basis of meals shared with typical Filipinos.
Arroyo, visiting Hong Kong in search of more Chinese foreign investment, said she hopes rice production will increase by 7% this year as the government invests in more irrigation equipment, research and development and seeds. The government may also move to reduce a tariff of 50% still imposed on privately imported rice.
Cora, however, does not put much faith in the government's promises. "The Chinese are buying projects," she said. "They are generating income here - and spending it outside."
In the end, she says, it's only the 10 million or so Filipinos who work overseas, dutifully sending remittances back home, who have bailed out the economy. "They are keeping us alive," she says. "The Chinese are exploiting us as always."
Journalist Donald Kirk is a frequent visitor to the Philippines and is the author of the books Philippines in Crisis: US Power Versus Local Revolt and Looted: The Philippines after the Bases.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Does Michael eat Rice? 
