Abe’s visit to Philippines highlights contest for influence with China
Bean soup and endangered eagle help Japanese leader and Duterte forge closer ties
Shinzo Abe has become the first foreign leader to visit Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, striking up a bond of potentially deep significance to the Asia-Pacific region.
Some national leaders have steered clear of Mr Duterte because of his incitement to murder drug dealers but the Japanese prime minister also visited the president’s home city of Davao on the southern island of Mindanao as he seeks a personal friendship.
After breakfast of bean soup and rice cakes, the two looked around Mr Duterte’s home in a quiet side street before a ceremony in which Mr Abe adopted a critically endangered Philippine eagle and named it Sakura (cherry blossom).
Mr Abe’s lavish attention highlights how the Philippines, with its strategic location, young population and ties to the US, stands at the heart of a geopolitical tug of war between Japan and China.
The relationship will be a test of Mr Abe’s highly personal style of diplomacy and whether Mr Duterte is willing to go beyond a transactional relationship with his neighbours.
“Without a question, Duterte is now at the receiving end of a massive bidding war between Japan and China for his heart and mind,” said Richard Javad Heydarian, a political analyst and assistant professor at De La Salle University in Manila.
Mr Abe pledged ¥1tn ($9bn) in aid over the next five years, including help to build a subway for Manila, plus aircraft and ships for the Philippine coast guard. Japan’s status as a big source of investment and jobs give it some leverage with Mr Duterte.
As with Japan’s longstanding policy in Myanmar, where it engaged with the military junta even as others cut stayed away, Mr Abe made no criticism of Mr Duterte’s war on drugs. Instead, he offered to help fund treatment for addicts.
The Japanese leader’s “subtle, nimble personal diplomacy with strongmen like Duterte” would help him in the quest to warn of China’s maritime ambitions and prevent a radical change in Philippine foreign policy, said Mr Heydarian.
The president has vowed “separation” from the US, the Philippines’ former colonial master, and played down an international court’s ruling against Beijing over disputed waters in the South China Sea.
That tack towards China alarmed Tokyo but senior Philippine ministers have been more measured. In separate interviews with the Financial Times last month, Perfecto Yasay Jr, foreign secretary, and Delfin Lorenzana, defence secretary, stressed that Manila also wanted good relations with Washington and other capitals.
“Politically there’s a competition and economically there’s a competition,” said Ryosuke Hanada, fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, who argued that Japan could not deploy as much money as China but offered technology and support to build capacity in the Philippines.
Mr Hanada pointed to Mr Duterte’s chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year and its potential to play a crucial role in shaping new regional trade deals following the collapse of the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Mr Duterte has long had contacts with Japanese government agencies and business people from his time as mayor of Davao and those informal ties are helping drive the relationship now. One link man is Sammy Uy, a Davao businessman who has known Mr Duterte for more than 30 years and was pictured with the president and Mr Abe in Tokyo last October.
Mr Abe, who has left Davao for Australia, will visit Indonesia and Vietnam, littoral states of the South China Sea, before returning to Tokyo on Tuesday.
Source: www.ft.com
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