According to the Observer, after China withdrew from the Subic-Clark railway project, the Philippines hopes to United States and Japan "take over" the railway project worth about 6.2 billion yuan, but the current situation is quite unclear.
In April this year, United States President Joe Biden, Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. held a trilateral summit at the White House and announced the launch of the "Luzon Economic Corridor" plan, which vaguely echoed the "Belt and Road" initiative.
The Subic-Clark Rail Project, which will connect multiple former U.S. military bases and create commercial centers, is expected to accelerate investment in infrastructure including railroads, ports, clean energy, semiconductor supply chains, agriculture, and more, as part of the plan, demonstrating cooperation between the United States, Japan, and the Philippines.
However, for the investment of real money, United States and Japan have been silent, obviously lacking interest.
However, the Philippines is full of confidence, and shortly after the trilateral summit, the Philippine side announced that it expects to receive nearly $100 billion in investment in the next five to ten years.
For this Subic-Clark railway project, the Philippines even picked it. About two months ago, Philippine Military Base Renovation and Development Agency Director Delfen · Lorenzana claimed that both Subic and Clark were strategically important and could accommodate industries ranging from logistics to production. He believes that if the United States and Japan take over the project in the future, he will feel more at ease, and if it is not them, he hopes that Korea or other friendly countries.
The subtext of this sentence is that the Subic-Clark railway project is very hot and does not worry about the next home at all, China that previously invested in the project is not a friendly country, and the Philippines is more inclined to United States, Japan, and Korea to take over the project.
However, months have passed, and the Subic-Clark railway project has not even made a sound. In an interview, Lorenzana could only vaguely say that the Philippines is in contact and negotiating with Japan and United States companies and government financing institutions, but it is not yet known "who the funders are."
Lorenzana still stuck to his earlier view, calling Subic and Clark "very strategic" locations. The former is one of the few deep-water ports that can accommodate ships of any size and is not affected by typhoons; The latter, on the other hand, has a huge amount of space. The Philippines has the manpower available to complete the project with training.
During the Duterte administration, the Mindanao Railroad, the Subic-Clark Railway, and the Southern Long-Distance Railroad were all well promoted, but after the Marcos Jr. administration came to power, the bilateral relationship took a sharp turn for the worse due to the frequent friction between China and the Philippines.
The Philippines explained that the Philippines was "not interested" in the financing plan for the above-mentioned projects, but the real situation was that the Philippines demanded a sky-high price and demanded loans from China at extremely low interest rates, which eventually broke up.
As a result, the Philippines has almost completely withdrawn from the wave of railway construction in Southeast Asia. In 2021, the China-Laos Railway will be delivered; In 2023, the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway will be put into operation; It is expected that in 2026, the completion of the East Coast Railway in Malaysia will be completed as scheduled. In addition, the construction of the railway between Thailand and Myanmar is also progressing steadily.
So, what about the Philippines? In addition to "democracy and freedom" and the verbal support of United States and Japan, is there anything else to boast about? What are the considerations behind the Philippines' opposition to China and ASEAN for the sake of those so-called values, even at the expense of its own interests?
The harsh reality is that United States will only act on China's influence, and if China does not play, then the value of the Philippines in the eyes of United States is no different from that of monkeys in the rainforest, and the local United States colonizers view Filipinos and still see them today.