China aims racist trope at Philippines for protesting Chinese aggression

Special to WorldTribune, July 23, 2026 Real World News

Geostrategy-Direct, July 21, 2026

By Richard Fisher

It is not enough that the Philippines has suffered greatly from China’s aggression in the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea), but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) further diminishes its own humanity by deploying crude racist propaganda tropes to mock the Philippine’s temerity in protesting China’s aggression.

China Daily Racism: Chinese state media China Daily on July 10 posted an AI generated video depicting Filipinos as scared monkeys controlled by the arms of the United States and Japan, to mock Philippine and other states’ protests on the 10th anniversary of the 2016 Hague arbitration against China’s claims to 90 percent of the South China Sea. / China Daily

Since early 1995 China has waged a paramilitary and then military campaign — short of war that would involve its military treaty ally the United States — to harass, bully and coerce the Philippines into accepting its illegal claims to most of the South China Sea, to include much of Manila’s Economic Exclusion Zones.

Also since 1995, China has used the lack of a resounding U.S. military response to build seven major air-naval-missile bases in the South China Sea, and most recently, to signal it may soon start building a military base at Scarborough Shoal (about 200 km from the Philippines, 830 km from China) and initiate a political then military campaign to take the Philippines’ Batanes Islands to control the Luzon Strait.

After losing a 2012 standoff with China over Scarborough Shoal, in 2013 the Philippine government of President Benigno Aquino (2010-2016) initiated proceedings in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), against China’s “nine-dash-line” claims to 90 percent of the South China Sea.

On July 12, 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration Tribunal ruled China’s claims were illegal and that China had violated UNCLOS by interfering in Philippine fishing and oil exploration; China boycotted the arbitration court proceedings and since 2016 has waged a vicious propaganda campaign to deny the legality of the court of arbitration ruling and to demonize Manila and its supporters who insist that China obey the 2016 ruling.

Manila has fought back by slowly modernizing its armed forces, expanding the access bases for U.S. forces under the current Administration of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos and by assembling a unique campaign of video documentation exposure and shaming of violent Chinese behavior in the South China Sea, to include ramming Philippine ships, blocking the access of Philippine ships to Philippine outposts in the South China Sea, and China’s creeping assimilation of Scarborough Shoal.

Washington and Manila took the opportunity of the July 12, 2026 10th anniversary of the Hague arbitration court ruling to issue a July 11 statement affirming that ruling, signed by 14 countries, saying, “We reaffirm the Arbitral Tribunal’s decision that there is no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea, including those based on “historic rights.”

But seemingly aware that the United States was organizing this 10th anniversary statement, the Chinese Communist Party sanctioned the July 10 release by its state media China Daily, of an AI-generated propaganda video that viciously mocked the Philippines protests against Chinese aggression, showing sad “Filipino” monkey taking orders from Washington and Tokyo, getting “punished” with a water cannon blast from a Chinese Coast Guard ship, and littering the sea with a copy of the 2016 Arbitration Tribunal decision.

On July 17, the Manila Standard newspaper reported, “Government officials, lawmakers, and civil society groups condemned the state-run Chinese media outlet’s portrayal as racist, dehumanizing, and an attack on the country’s dignity,” noting that the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs had demanded that China remove the video.