Jarius Bondoc
Filipinos
had better produce two million more tons of rice a year. Vietnam and Thailand,
from which the Philippines gets cereals, will soon no longer be able to sell.
With harvests dwindling, they must conserve stocks for domestic consumption.
Filipinos will be on their own.
China has
dammed up the Mekong River on its side, drying up farms of southern neighbors
downstream. Diverted by 11 Chinese dams, Mekong water levels in Vietnam,
Thailand, Cambodia and Laos are at the lowest in 60 years. Large swaths of rice
lands, fruit and vegetable plantations and fishponds are parched. Livelihoods
of 60 million people are crunched. Drinking water sources are becoming scarce.
Salinity is ruining the fertile Mekong Delta. Treating the river as its
possession alone, Beijing is to build eight more dams. That will totally dry up
Vietnam and Thailand’s irrigation. Hunger looms in mainland Southeast Asia.
Philippine imports of cheap starch, coffee, tea, fish, crustaceans and mollusks
from them will end.
The Mekong
springs from the Tibetan plateau, as do the Yellow and Yangtze rivers eastward
and Brahmaputra to the west. Since Beijing’s communist rulers annexed Tibet in
1956 they claim right to do as they please. They refuse to sign up with the
Mekong Water Commission consisting of Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.
Doing so would oblige them to share the river, or at least scientific data on
rainfall and siltation. Two of China’s 11 dams alone contain as much as 11
million square miles of water, as large as Chesapeake Bay in America. It’s
clearly more than enough for China, world experts say. But Beijing’s commissars
are obsessed with grandiose engineering projects, even if harmful to their own
citizens, like the Three Gorges monstrosity.
There’s
worse. As world focus is on fighting COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing is escalating
militarization in the South China Sea. Objective: food, fuel and geopolitical
supremacy. More arms have been placed in seven Philippine reefs that Beijing
illegally concreted into fortresses since 2013. From those Beijing dispatches
Chinese fisheries militia vessels to poach in the Philippines’ exclusive
economic zone. With their catch dwindled, Filipinos must buy from China scad
(galunggong) stolen from them. In Scarborough Shoal 120 miles from Luzon but
800 miles far from China, Beijing’s gunboats bar Filipino fishers. Inside
Chinese thieves take giant clams and fan corals planted there by Filipino
scientists in the 1970s. All those Beijing does against international laws and
the UN court ruling against its destruction of food sources and the
environment.
Of late
Beijing’s navy has also harassed Filipino sailors closer to Palawan. A Chinese
warship trained weapons on a Philippine patrol in the Malampaya gas field.
Beijing falsely claims the area and nearby gas-rich Recto Bank. If it takes
Malampaya, Luzon would lose 45 percent of its power source. Blackouts would
force food processors and poultry and hog raisers to shut down.
China also
poaches in waters of Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. Friendship and
neighborliness mean nothing to Beijing’s communist overlords. The rights
of 667 million Southeast Asians are of no import.
Meanwhile in Santa Cruz, Zambales concerned
citizens on Wednesday expressed alarm over a report that a Chinese ship docked
at the port in this town is being loaded with nickel ore, defying government regulations
against such mining.
Where can we turn to?
Is war inevitable?
https://youtu.be/vAfeYMONj9E
