Where is the Philippines in all of these? Plenty. Now that we are in the Golden Age of Infrastructure with a slogan proposing to “Build, Build, Build”, the Duterte administration has been making loans from its neighbors particularly China to help achieve this. The Duterte administration is making sure that this relationship will reap its rewards. The brazen and aggressive illegal black sand mining that happened in Zambales is just a speck of what the China-Philippine partnership can do to our shores. With steel manufacturing a priority in China, the Zambales case is no coincidence and will most likely happen again especially now that the pact (and fate) between these two countries are inevitably sealed. Continue reading →