State-run television PTV-4 will air starting in August Chinese shows dubbed in Filipino.
According to the PNA, Chinese embassy press attache Li Lingxiao said the shows will include a TV drama, a Chinese movie, a cartoon and a documentary.
"From now on, our Filipino friends could, for the first time, watch Chinese TV series, documentaries, cartoons and movies dubbed in Tagalog on PTV," Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua said at the launch of what has been dubbed as the Chinese TV Theater.
Notable opposition lawmaker Gary Alejano of the Magdalo party decried the move, claiming it is an exercise of soft power. The reader can find the details in the article I linked. To sum it up, opposition personas dislike the plan to allow our state-run channel to broadcast Chinese shows which aims to showcase Chinese culture to the Filipinos.
So What’s the Big Deal?
Aside from taking our reefs and militarizing them, the People’s Republic of China has been flexing their muscles as part of their grand scheme to restore Fu Qiang – wealth and prosperity (I wrote a blog post about this in 2015). I believe China is well aware that Filipinos have slave mentality tendencies, more or less parallel with gross colonial mentality. Any Filipino with a high degree of socio-political awareness knows that we are a bunch of submissive folks with low national self-esteem thinking that anything “imported” is “superior”. (Madali mapasuko o magpasakop dahil ang tingin sa sarili ay mababa. Ika nga, lahat ng “imported” ay “superior”.) We cuck to the West, anything American is “better” to the point that the tag “Little Brown Americans” still applies to us.
It is a bit hypocritical that we (or many Filipinos) drool to South Korean soap operas (Koreanovelas), idolize Japanese anime characters, and look up to Americans for their culture. Some from this generation even pointed out that their weakening Filipino/Tagalog vocabulary is because of our “good education (in English)” and even spoke it as if it was a good thing. ¡Qué horror! Patawarin nawa sa ‘di nila pagtalastas sa kanilang pagkakamali! (The horror! Forgive them for being unaware of their mistake!)
So what’s the point? Point is the only reason for the outcry to this move is the fact the China’s other actions seem too shady or outright harassment. That is the point many of our friends, both anti and pro-Duterte have failed to point out, instead they resorted to calling each other bobo (stupid) or tanga (ignorant) and other ad hominems. China is like a distrusted big brother to the eyes of Filipinos. South Koreans, Japanese, and the Americans seem to be the good guys in the fight for safekeeping Filipino sovereignty. It should be obvious that our inherent prejudice against China is the sole reason why many are vocal against the move.
Just some trivia: Way back around 1998-2000, when I was a child there were even Chinese dub versions of my favorite show Scooby-Doo! Where Are You being aired on Sunday morning (or was it evening) on Cartoon Network (Sample Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3_R5Zsvc7Q). There was no “panic” back then because the geopolitics of the region were a bit different from today’s situation.
Added Thought: We might be able to take advantage of this move by learning the enemy’s mentality. Like what Sun Tzu, esteemed Chinese author of “The Art of War” wrote, “知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負；不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆 or “Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time.
