Filipinos are a grateful people. We do not forget genuine help, and we say salamat when thanks is due. But gratitude is not a price tag on our sovereignty. No vaccine, no shipment of fertilizer, and no infrastructure project buys the right to violate our rights in the West Philippine Sea, to harass our fishermen, or to aim water cannons and military-grade lasers at our Coast Guard vessels.
The Secretary did not “bite the hand that feeds.” He simply refused to let that hand cover our eyes while the other hand takes what is ours under UNCLOS and the 2016 Arbitral Award. To question whether long-term good faith exists is not ingratitude — it is honesty.
And if assistance is given only so it can later be waved in our faces to demand our silence, then it was never kindness to begin with — it was leverage. True kindness is never thrown back as a debt. The moment help is turned into a weapon, it ceases to be kindness and becomes coercion.
China is most welcome to be a true friend of the Philippines. But a true friend does not ask you to surrender your sovereignty and sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea as the price of friendship.
