Tuesday, October 02, 2007 Sanchez: Chinese bashing By Benedicto Sanchez Nature Speaks
SOMEHOW, I got agitated with Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s racist slurs against the Chinese, that while acknowledging that “China invented civilization in the East,” she also branded them as the inventor of corruption “for all of human civilization.”
That was a true foot-in-mouth gaffe that she committed. The logic flies beyond historical facts and common sense. If she reviewed her world history, Edward Gibbon blamed corruption as a major reason for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, which then was the showcase of western civilization.
And that empire had no interaction with the Chinese empire at that time.
Her imputation defies common sense if she meant corruption is inherent in the Chinese genetic make-up. There is no other way I could interpret the catch-all phrase “for all of human civilization.” So those with Chinese blood would most likely be corrupt. I always thought of myself as a true-blooded Filipino.
Both sides of my parents have all Filipino (more correctly, Spanish) family names: Sánchez, Nuque, Mendoza, Quito, Santos.
My looks were no big deal when I was in school. I felt as Filipino as my classmates Raúl Alonzo, Ernesto Nario, Ramón de Vera. After college -- and I got to meet new friends and acquaintances -- things changed.
Many people often mistook me for a Chinese or Japanese. In Ongpin, Metro-Manila’s Chinatown, store proprietors greet me in Mandarin. I never stood out in Hong Kong or China. With my chinky-eyes, I looked more Chinese than many Hong Kong or Szenchen locals. At a Sunday Mass in Chambéry, France, an old nun got perplexed, trying to second-guess my nationality: Chinois? Japonais?
Although I proudly bore my Filipino nationality abroad, it helped that I look Japanese. In fact, a Japanese volunteer in Rome greeted me “konbanwa.”
That’s probably why I never experienced the horror stories of racial discrimination that OFWs encounter in international airlines.
I’m sure I have Chinese blood. I haven’t checked my maternal side, but there’s probably quite plenty of that. From my paternal side, however, I learned from the family tree that we had a tall Chinese ancestor, who came to the Philippines in the 1850s. We also had Spanish blood from a Spanish friar.
Since then, future generations procreated mixed blood that friends tell me I’m a prime example of a racial melting pot, with my eyes and nose as prominent features.
Yet, despite obviously having Chinese blood, that didn’t taint Dad’s character as a public servant. As a provincial fiscal, he never took a bribe. He didn’t kiss Marcos’s behinds so he can be promoted a judge.
We raised us with middle class values and means, feeling neither poor nor rich.
Am I corrupt, as the RPA-ABB and DSB Councilor Vicente Bacordo alleged? That I absconded with P22 million of DENR’s reforestation project money? If that’s the case, I shouldn’t be working my buns off for lousy NGO pay over all these years.
Miriam Defensor would most likely have Chinese blood. She certainly has the looks. Would that imply that as a government official, she would be prone to corruption?
So how does the Philippines compare to China in terms of corruption?
Transparency International, in its 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index, placed the Philippines 131st in a list of 180 countries. China is ranked at 72nd place along with India, Mexico, Brazil, Morocco and Suriname.
The Corruption Perception Index also uses a similar rating system, but with zero indicating high levels of perceived corruption and ten indicating low levels of perceived corruption. The Philippines’ 2.5 was the same for Honduras, Burundi, Iran, Libya, Nepal and Yemen.
Now if she had said she smelled something fishy between the Chinese corporation and Philippine government officials on the NBN-ZTE deal, then Defensor might not have to eat her words. A word of advice: never generalize.
