SWS survey finds most Filipinos think Chinese workers are security threats

Most Filipinos think that Chinese workers in the country are security threats, while an overwhelming majority admitted they were concerned about the rising numbers of such workers, a survey released yesterday shows.

The survey, conducted by the Social Weather Stations from Sept. 27 to 30, showed that 52 percent of 1,800 adult respondents said they agreed with the sentiment that the Chinese workers were threats to the Philippines’ overall security. Only 27 percent said they disagreed with the idea, while 21 percent said they were undecided.

Read: Chinese embassy slams plan to move casino workers to ‘self-contained communities’

The same survey also showed that 70 percent of Filipinos admitted that they were worried about the number of Chinese workers in the country, which has increased since President Rodrigo Duterte came into power in 2016.

Despite the overwhelming anti-Chinese sentiment, only 31 percent of respondents said there were “very many” or “somewhat many” Chinese residents in their own neighborhoods, and most of those respondents were from Metro Manila.

Read: Duterte’s national security adviser says influx of Chinese nationals in PH poses security threat

The number of Chinese workers in the Philippines has reportedly increased in the past few years, with many of them working in gaming companies where their language skills are needed to deal with the Chinese clientele.

This has sparked concerns among critics, who say that Filipinos are losing out on jobs to the Chinese nationals. They point out that the 1987 Constitution mandates that Filipinos get preferential treatment when it comes to employment.

The presence of many Chinese workers has even led National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon, a key adviser to Duterte, to say that those working illegally in the country could be considered a national security threat.

President Duterte’s government is generally perceived as having pro-China policies, and in February he said he didn’t want to kick out illegal Chinese workers from the Philippines because it might lead to the deportation of undocumented Filipinos working in China.