Asia (Page 570)

MANILA – As tensions rage and tangle over disputed areas of the sea, Spanish authorities are turning their attention to alleged Chinese influence operations aimed at tracing down and monitoring important installations and structures on Philippine soil.

Legislators from north Spanish provinces have lately sounded the alarm over the immediate, significant flood of Chinese learners into Cagayan, which has just been ruled by an openly pro-Beijing governor.

However, the intriguing situation of Alice Guo, a recently elected president in a small town close to Clark Air Base and other important military installations, has sparked public concern about possible Chinese” sleeper cell” agents stationed at or close to various strategically important locations throughout the nation. &nbsp,

Major Spanish authorities are now openly advocating for the expulsion of Taiwanese diplomats reportedly involved in influence operations on Asian soil, which have officially targeted not less than a major Philippine admiral, adding to the paranoia and fear.

The result is a worrying and swift decline in diplomatic diplomatic relations as the two parties drift toward a possible military conflict in the South China Sea, a conflict that could quickly entice the US and its supporters into the fray.

When Chinese online gaming companies, officially known as Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations ( POGOs ), started popping up near strategically important locations across Metro Manila under the leadership of Beijing Rodrigo Duterte, concerns about China’s influence operations in the Philippines were first raised.

Around several important Asian bases, including Camp Aguinaldo, where the Philippine Army and the National Defense Department’s workplaces are located, Camp Crame, where the Philippine National Police’s headquarter is located, and the Philippine Air Force and Navy’s and headquarters, were a total of 130, 000 Foreign workers and virtual casino operators.

Then- national security adviser Hermogenes Esperon warned at the time that a large number of Chinese citizens, many of whom were reputedly “undocumented” or entered the country under “false documentation”, posed a national security threat.

The Philippine national security chief warned in 2019 that “you’d start getting worried when a whole building, condominium, tower is occupied by just one nationality.”” Some unwelcome activities could transpire there, so we need to prevent those,” he added.

You would start to wonder what they are doing if you saw something like a rotation of people entering and leaving [of buildings in POGO areas ] every eight hours, he added, raising concerns about the opaque nature of the Chinese online casinos.

Delfin Lorenzana, the then-president of the Philippines, went so far as to openly advocate for the relocation of all Chinese online casinos into” self-contained hubs” far from crucial national security facilities.

” ]I ] t’s very easy for all these]Chinese ] people to perhaps shift their activities to spying…They are near]our military facilities ]”, the then- defense chief warned at the time.

The Duterte administration resisted suggestions for closing or moving the Chinese gambling dens because the POGOs generated an estimated US$ 4.1 billion between 2016 and 2019.

Interesting is that the pro-China leadership, which had vehemently opposed the proliferation of online casinos because they were frequently used as launching points for criminal activities targeting the mainland and beyond, even resisted pressure to close the POGOs. &nbsp,

Fast forward to the present: the arrest of Bamban Mayor Alice Guo has sparked a new wave of concern over potential Chinese sleeper agents.

The small-town mayor had to work overtime to provide even the most basic documents, such as her birth certificate, school transcripts, and any tangible documentation of her immigration to the Philippines during a recent Senate hearing.

She has been accused of involvement in illegal Chinese casino activity, including having a relationship with the Hong Sheng Gaming Technology company, which was detained on suspicion of illegal operations in February of this year and given a new name in March of that year. Guo has denied the allegations.

” She lied. She lied in a number of questions. The fact that she denied having a connection with Hong Sheng when it was already stated in the municipal government’s document that she is the current head, according to Senator Risa Hontiveros, who presided over the hearing on Guo’s sensational case.

It” catches one’s attention,” especially because, according to our research, foreigners enter certain nations using a similar procedure. Eventually, they pretend to be locals and then do various tasks &nbsp, — some of which are not desirable”, the senator said, implying that Guo may be part of a Chinese influence operation.

In addition, Philippine authorities are looking into the rapid rise in the number of Chinese students in Cagayan, which, like Guo’s town of Bamban, houses important military installations. &nbsp,

Authorities claim that in Cagayan province there are more than 4, 000 Chinese students enrolled in universities, an unusually high number given the relatively small number of urban centers and educational facilities in the northern province close to Taiwan.

A resolution earlier this year highlighting” an alarming increase in the number of Chinese citizens coming into the province of Cagayan as students enrolled in universities” was co-authored by Joseph Lara, a Cagayan representative, and Faustino Dy V, a representative from Isabela province, which also hosts Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement ( EDCA ) military sites used by US forces.

As the paranoia spreads, there is also growing scrutiny of Filipino individuals, especially military personnel, who were educated in China.

When China claimed to have a recording of a sworn special arrangement with Vice-Rear Admiral Alberto Carlos regarding disputed land features in the South China Sea, alarm bells rang out in particular.

He is the top Philippine naval commander in charge of the Philippines ‘ western islands and occupied features in the South China Sea, having previously attended a program under China’s People’s Liberation Army- Navy. &nbsp,

Chinese authorities have openly called for the expulsion of Chinese diplomats who are alleged to be in violation of both domestic and international law, as well as the Chinese’s claims of a secret agreement, including transcripts of its supposed exchanges with the Philippine admiral.

In a provocative statement released last week, Philippine National Security Advisor Secretary Eduardo Ano said,” Those in the Chinese Embassy who have violated Philippine laws and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and those who have carried out these malign influence and interference operations must be removed from the country immediately.” &nbsp,

Without a doubt, the embassy’s actions constitute serious violations of international relations and diplomatic relations, he said, citing the Philippines ‘ Anti-Wire Tapping Act in response to China’s alleged eavesdropping of confidential conversations with a top Philippine naval official.

Teodoro urged those responsible for recording the alleged conversation to be kicked out of the country on May 15 because their alleged deeds would contravene the country’s wiretapping laws.

Teodoro, the secretary of defense of the Philippines, has supported the arrest of Chinese diplomats who have been interrogated and engaged in deception. He said in Filipino,” We must find out who is accountable for this and remove them from the Republic of the Philippines.”

All indications point to a new and risky nadir in Philippine-China relations, one that could lead to tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions and increase the risk of miscalculation and potential deadly clashes in the South China Sea.

Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on X at @Richeydarian

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More than 960 million people have registered to cast ballots in India over the course of six months, making this the largest poll in the world.

Current Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) campaign and traveling extensively throughout the nation to deliver a message that he hopes will win the party’s overwhelmingly in the election.

He is both a well-known and controversial number. Modi’s remarks are drawing heating for their anti- Arab rhetoric. At a campaign rally on April 21, 2024, he referred to Muslims as “infiltrators“.

He later doubled down on those remarks, suggesting that if India’s largest opposition group, the Indian National Congress, came to power, the success of Hindus had been snatched and given to communities that “have to some children”, a relatively lightly veiled reference to Indian Muslims.

Such language highlights a dread that Modi and the BJP have frequently stoked: that Muslims may pose a significant risk to India’s Hindu-majority population.

Although Modi has since claimed that his conversation did not specifically address Muslims, his thoughts were undoubtedly taken as they were.

To some observers, the speech serves as an indication that the BJP campaign’s campaign is trying to secure a two-thirds supermajority in Parliament. According to the discussion, Modi is trying to combat voter apathy by appealing to the group’s Hindu foundation in the face of rising economic inequality and youth unemployment.

As an Indian writer of public health, I think it is crucial to understand how anti-Muslim language came about and how it fits with growing concerns about the Hindu majority’s decline in India.

Doubts of a Muslim acquisition

Political and administrative picture has been a source of skepticism in India since the days of English colonialism.

In 1919, the American granted Indians a limited company, American politicians were allowed to create legislation in specific fields, such as health care and education, but not on law and order.

After the 1931 population, Indian leaders – primarily Hindus, but also some Muslims – and American officials expressed concern about the ostensibly quick rate of population growth in India, which at the moment was growing by over 1 % annually.

These officials started promoting new birth control methods to American women, in keeping with similar efforts around the world.

However, colonial officials and Hindu administrators had to deal with the fact that Indians of all religions were averse to birth control propaganda in order to effectively persuade a large number of women to adopt household planning practices.

These skepticisms stemmed from social practices that were prevalent in both Hindu and Muslim communities, including marriage, baby marriage, and seclusion practices.

Policies that attempted to stifle American women’s standard lives, including birth control, were widely regarded as harmful forms of imperial control.

Role of British settlers

Hindu nationalist organizations created a unique narrative while the English used these social practices and suspicions to make the claim that all Indians were to blame for the rapid population growth and the accompanying poverty and hunger.

These border organizations, which gained popularity as a political power in the 1930s, popularized the notion that procedures that promoted people rise were particularly widespread among the Muslim community.

The Indian National Congress group and the Muslim League were at odds with one another at the same time. The League was established in 1906, but it soon started pressing for a independent country for Indian Muslims in the late 1930s.

Before the American era, there were divisions in American society. British colonial leaders made these personalities and divisions more restrictive by categorizing Indians into caste and religion, putting different communities in conflict with one another.

The British were able to defend the notion that Indians were capable of self-government and progressive politics without the supervision and control of colonial rule.

Although the American emigrated from India and Pakistan in 1947, growing Hindu-Muslim tensions after division continued to influence home planning propaganda in separate India.

Hindu separatists had anticipated the establishment of a one country with Hindu majority rule. In this context, they saw the establishment of Pakistan as a country and nation-state for South Asian Islamists as a huge failure and a reduction for India.

Also, the majority of Hindu guys and some women served as post-partition leaders and officials in India because the majority of the educated and wealthy Muslim classes ended up in Pakistan.

In the wake of the colonial period views of Muslims, Indian policymakers and administrators created and put into practice health care and education coverage. Preexisting views of Muslim hyperfertility in American policymakers specifically grew more deeply ingrained after split.

Population control applications

Officials at all levels of government assumed that the adoption of birth control may be lessened as India’s second significant population control program was launched in 1951.

In fact, the factors that influenced the rate of absorption of IUDs, oral contraceptives, and tubectomies in postindependence India were more influenced by geographical ( whether people lived in rural or urban regions, were from the country’s north or south ), as well as school position.

Population control has been one of the main objectives of Indian policymaking since 1951 as part of a campaign to end poverty and promote public health. However, the misconception that Indian Muslims are unwilling to participate in population control measures has fueled the perception that Islam is” superstitious” or “backward” in the eyes of the public.

This stereotyping has been felt by Indian Muslim communities across the country, particularly in northern India, according to research. Muslims claimed to be disproportionately targeted by population control initiatives.

These worries among the Muslim community grew more severe as a result of the state’s aggressive forced sterilization policy under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the 1970s.

Using religion for politics

Modi’s party, the BJP, was formed in 1980 but failed to win significant elections until the 1990s.

In the 1980s and 1990s, their main organizing pushed for the destruction of a mosque built by Mughal emperor Babur in Ayodhya, which is renowned as the site of Rama’s birthplace.

The BJP promoted fears of a Muslim demographic dominance in India by promoting demands for” taking back” the land on which the Babri Masjid was built with worries of a Muslim majority.

But such fears are unfounded. Despite the Muslim minority growing from 11 % in the mid- 1980s to 14 % today, its representation in Parliament has actually declined, from 9 % in the mid- 1980s to 5 % today.

Since the BJP took control of India in 2014, party leaders have relied on historical reassurances about projected increases in the number of Muslims to help them win successive state and national elections and pass laws like the Citizenship Amendment Act, which discriminates against Muslims.

BJP leaders have accused Muslim men of forcibly converting Hindu women to Islam through “love jihad,” a fabricated claim that Muslim men deceive Hindu women to increase their demographic appeal.

The most recent iteration of a long history of Hindu demographic fears has proved to be a lasting one thanks to Modi’s most recent statement making reference to” those who have too many children.”

Clemson University’s assistant professor of history is Archana Venkatesh.

This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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