[OPINION] Beijing allies prove Chinese-language schools are political

Detailed summary

Chinese-Filipino families, who simply want to pass on their language and heritage to their children, become primary targets of foreign influence

For months, the Chinese embassy has insisted that Chinese-language education in the Philippines is “normal, open, and transparent.” Ambassador Jing Quan has dismissed talk of United Front work or political infiltration as “complete nonsense.” When Chinese teachers were abruptly pulled from the country in October, the embassy cited “safety” and blamed critics (especially me and Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro) for having “forced more than 180 Chinese teachers out.”

But, on November 6, Huang Duanming, chairman of the Philippine Chinese Education Research Center (PCERC), settled the question decisively. With Ambassador Jing looking on approvingly, Huang charged every Chinese school in the Philippines to “uphold the one-China principle,” contribute to “Belt and Road construction,” help build Xi Jinping’s “community with a shared future for mankind” and “fulfill its responsibility to the cause of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

In other words, Huang instructed Chinese schools to advance Xi Jinping’s political agenda in the Philippines.

Incredibly, Ambassador Jing then urged the same audience not to fear “smear campaigns” against Chinese-language education, by which he meant SeaLight’s reporting that has clearly documented the very United Front work that Jing denies and that Huang just demonstrated.

Huang’s list of what he considers Chinese school responsibilities is the political program of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) almost verbatim, from Beijing’s hard-line stance on Taiwan to Xi’s signature slogans. It was directed at Filipino schools that educate Filipino children — almost all of whose families likely wish they could just get their kids a quality education without Beijing’s political interference.

And Huang is no fringe figure. The PCERC he leads has coordinated Chinese-language education in the Philippines since 1991, and by his own account most of the country’s roughly 150 Chinese schools use its textbooks.

That’s why this debate was never about…

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