MANILA—In 2013, a small group of scholars from the Philippines flew to China, seeking to keep communication lines open through fellow academics, at a time when relations between the 2 neighbors were at their lowest.

Manila had just sued Beijing before an international arbitral tribunal over its expansionism in the South China Sea, asking the Hague-based court to clarify maritime entitlements in the vital sea lane.

The move was seen as unprecedented in this part of the world coming from a small nation standing up to an emerging world power, which saw it as an affront and a diplomatic embarrassment.

But professor Aileen Baviera, who had studied China for decades, knew that Sino-Philippine relations were much more complex and neither could afford to keep their doors permanently shut.

So, with fellow academics from the Philippine Association of Chinese Studies, she helped sow the seeds of a “Track II diplomacy,” said Jose Santiago “Chito” Sta. Romana, Manila’s ambassador to Beijing and who was part of the group.

This non-official effort was meant for both countries to “keep engaging though you have differences” and consistent with her decades-long focus on scholarly dialogue with China, he said.

CHINA POLICY

The Philippines went on to win its case in 2016, the year President Rodrigo Duterte rose to power and embraced a 2-track policy of friendly relations with Beijing without necessarily abandoning Manila’s territorial claim.

“All of these were academic discussions but it became the source of many of the ideas that eventually led to the improvement of relations,” Sta. Romana told ABS-CBN News.

“Aileen was certainly a source of influence, certainly of my thinking and of the advice that eventually became the roots of what is now our policy toward China.”

Baviera passed away at 60 at the San Lazaro Hospital in Manila early Saturday due to “severe pneumonia related to COVID-19,” according to her daughter.

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The hospital had not received official test results when she died, a situation similar to several other cases in other medical facilities due to the huge volume of samples.

• PH records 77 new cases of COVID-19; total at 307

“That’s how the virus behaves in most patients with those comorbidities,” Dr. Rontgene Solante, who heads the hospital’s infectious diseases section, told ABS-CBN News.

“You can’t underestimate those infected and with comorbidities because it can rapidly progress right in front of you.”

Official government figures identified 19 fatalities out of 307 cases reported as of March 21.

NUANCED APPROACH

Seven years since the Baviera-led dialogue with fellow scholars, Duterte’s China-friendly policy remains under scrutinity, in particular, on whether the economic benefits from Beijing were worth Malacañang’s “weak” approach to the territorial dispute.

“She was never into the China-bashing,” said Ramon Casiple, executive director of a Manila-based political think tank who had known her since their student days at the University of the Philippines in the late 70s.

“She saw the need for a nuanced approach.”

To understand her thinking, one has to look at her vast body of work spanning more than 40 years in the areas of diplomacy, international studies, Asia-Pacific security, territorial and maritime disputes, and regional integration.

She was the Philippines’ foremost sinologist, one who had “major contributions in terms of understanding modern China and how to deal with it,” said Casiple.

PRO-FILIPINO

In a 2019 essay, she described China as “complex” with “multiple facets” and not “unidimensional and not always clear as day.”

“Chinese society is old and it is new. There is the State, and there is the 1.4 billion thinking, breathing, living people. Simplistic thinking will not do,” she wrote.

But if one had to pick sides, she said, given testy relations between the Philippines and China in recent years, “one must take the side of the Filipino people.”

“As China’s national power rises and its global economic and political clout increases, it will have more resources to defend its interests and more friends to support its agenda. The Philippines, on the other hand, will have only us Filipinos to defend our interests and to promote our welfare.”

Baviera supported the idea of “strategic hedging” for the Philippines in the face of the much bigger China and the United States’ rivalry in the region, said Sta. Romana.

“You try to hedge between the 2 strategic rivals but your compass is the national interest of the Philippines,” he said.

“And what you work for is how to promote the national interest of the Philippines as you try to develop relations with both the US and China.”