‘Nation of servants’ gibe hurts the Philippine ego

Hong Kong columnist Chip Chao believed he was merely writing a satirical piece but has discovered the cost of a little recklessness with words.

He described the Philippines as a nation of servants and wrote that he summoned his Filipina domestic helper to warn her that if her country continues laying a claim on the disputed Spratly islands, she would face dire consequences.

Of course the tone of the column was pure satire, especially where he says that if the Philippines declared war on China he would have to fire his helper since he can’t be seen to be sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her wages.

There’s nothing wrong with a little humour now and again. God knows in these tough economic times we all need a little laughter. But dismissing a country as a nation of servants? The Philippines didn’t take too kindly to the slight, and have apparently banned him for “arrogance and disrespect”.

Mr Chao says he’s a bit surprised by the reaction. It’s not unusual in Hong Kong and other parts of greater China to look down upon the somewhat darker cousins in southern Asia, which explains why many observers, including sympathetic Chinese consider Chao’s comments a “racial slur”.

The majority of domestic helpers in Hong Kong are from the Philippines, where the concept is so institutionalised that the little room behind the kitchen that is reserved for the domestic helper is generally known as the “Filipino room”, never mind that helper might in fact be Indonesian or Thai.

It is easy to see why a kid being raised by citizens of a particular nation might grow up believing there was some sort of divine destiny to such an ethno-geographical master-servant arrangement.

One would think, however, that by the time they got to Mr Chao’s age, which going by the pictures suggests at least four decades, they would have become disabused of this notion. But that’s satire for you. Some would say naked sarcasm.

Though the Spratly islands are claimed by a host of countries, it is unlikely that besides the odd minor skirmish, a major war will be fought over them in the near future. The war that is going on is largely verbal, among bloggers.

It’s always fascinating to see how commentators succumb to mindless emotional outbursts in the democratic space the internet provides. Some are calling Mr Chao racist, inhuman, a slave, and a host of other unprintable things.

The ones I find amusing are those which call him “illiterate”. Clearly this is from someone whose grasp of the language has been somewhat shaken by anger, for how can you be illiterate and still write?

What this storm in a teacup has done is to bring both race and the Spratly islands into sharp focus. Responses to controversial articles show the sad tendency to fight perceived bigotry with even more blatant bigotry, to the extent that people are no longer communicating but merely demonstrating how low they can get when national pride is injured.

The islands are believed to hold vast mineral and oil reserves, so tensions will remain high for the foreseeable future. China recently upped the ante by dispatching a patrol vessel to the islands.

Ideally, the respective governments should get together to hammer out an agreement. But sovereignty is a delicate and tricky affair when gas and oil are at stake, or even when there isn’t much more at stake than national pride, as in the Kenya-Uganda dispute over a relatively insignificant, overcrowded island on Lake Victoria.

In the case of the very resource-rich Spratlys, it isn’t simply a case of geographical proximity for islands that lie between Vietnam and the Philippines, but a complicated cloak and dagger history of uncertain records, half-baked agreements and military conflicts also involving China, Brunei and Taiwan.