Not so innocent

Economic fear-mongering is all that’s left for pro-China Filipinos to run on. They certainly can’t run on their record of standing up to China’s aggression in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), their staunch critics scoff.

Typical of that sort of recent economic fear-mongering, their critics say, is ex-national security adviser Clarita Carlos’s viral sarcastic comment: “Boycott made in China? Eh, yang brief and panties mo galing dun! Paano na? (your briefs and panties come from there! What now?).”

Other than being plainly misleading for the fact that Filipinos can still protect their privates with underwear from Vietnam, Thailand and Bangladesh, Ms. Carlos showed she obviously didn’t do her homework as befitting a national security expert.

Not diligently doing her homework may have prompted Philippine Military Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Mike Logico’s viral reaction: “Now I remember why I walked out of her class during MNSA (Master in National Security Administration).”

Anyway, all this tête-à-tête about underwear is part of interesting side brawls between pro- and anti-China Filipinos triggered by the ongoing feisty animosity between local foreign affairs and legislative officials and rude Chinese envoys.

It’s a wildly and hilariously surreal brawl. But its strangeness is what has made it get so far, especially in light of some pro-China Filipinos being too drunk on Chinese “Kool-Aid.”

Being high on the “Kool-Aid” is what makes them handily forget that the country’s supposed total dependence on Chinese textiles hides sordid details.

So, here’s the sordid part China’s backers don’t reveal about the Filipino garment industry: forced labor by China’s Uyghur minority and laid-off Filipino workers.

It’s a ruse our slimy autocratic local Chinese embassy officials, freeloading on our democratic spaces, would be stumped to answer since it involves a shameful issue in their country.

The same ruse, however, holds even among Filipino garment exporters who warn that any diplomatic disruptions with China risk the P1-billion worth of garments the Philippines exports annually, about half of which are made with textiles and fabrics sourced from China.

On the surface, what the exporters say is factual. Only that they fail to highlight the existence of a consequential American law, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), with which they had to grapple in recent years.

The 2021 UFLPA presumes, says journalist Ian Urbina in a Vera Files report, “that goods made wholly or partly in Xinjiang (province) are produced with forced labor unless importers can prove otherwise.”

Europe also has a UFLPA-like forced labor ban that takes effect late this year.

“The Philippines,” says Urbina, “has no equivalent blanket import ban, but the United States government has pressured it and other countries to implement one.” And that pressure “hit Filipino minimum wage workers the hardest. In May 2024, garment companies in the Philippines laid off over 4,000 workers.”

“Company representatives explained that one factor for the layoffs was the UFLPA. When the US stopped shipments to investigate potential links to Xinjiang cotton, it resulted in delays and lost revenue.

In March 2026, the US launched a probe to determine whether the Philippines and 50 other trading partners had effectively banned the import of goods produced using forced labor.”

Our trade officials have since agreed to cooperate with the investigations and put up safeguards to ensure that Philippine exports made no use of Chinese forced labor, Urbina reported.

Carlos’s sycophantic drool, therefore, is not so innocent after all.