By Paul M. Gutierrez / People’s Tonight / February 11, 2019 

IN the course of several years, Price WaterhouseCoopers (PWC), one of the world’s largest “professional services” company (and the 5th largest privately-owned company in America), has issued its “global economic growth” projections, naming “Who is Who” in the global economic scene by 2050.

With its presence in at least 158 countries, the Philippines included, it could be said that its projections pack a lot of credibility.

And “fortunately” for us, PWC projects the Philippines to be on the top 20 largest economies by that time.

Browsing over the Internet, I noticed that PWC’s growth projections, significantly turned “negative” during the Aquino regime — the “16th largest economy” during its 2012 report; the “20th largest economy” in its 2015 report and then the “24th most powerful economy” in its 2017 report, the last full year of Noynoy Aquino and his gangmates in the seat of power.

Translation? The country’s economy and future growth under the Liberal Party, has been grossly mismanaged that foreign economic analysts have no choice but to also downgrade their observations accordingly.

Kumbaga, “binaboy” lang ng LP ang ating bansa, kaya, bakit kailangang ibalik sila sa poder sa halalan ngayong 2019, tsk!

Now, if there is one projection that PWC appears to have gotten it correct is that over these same years, it was stated that China would be the leading economic power in the world next to India and with the USA of relegated to the third spot.

Translation again? China is destined to be the next global leader (today it is already the second biggest economy after Uncle Sam) even as the economic strength of the United States continue to dwindle accordingly.

And why not?

“Wars of aggression” and interference in the domestic affairs of other nations have been the mainstay of U.S foreign policy since the 1950’s, during the terms of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, the most significant of which is their intervention in the Korean War and the Vietnamese War of Independence against French Imperialism in Indochina.

Any war — conventional or guerrilla — costs money. A lot of money.

By the time of Richard Nixon in the early 70’s, U.S imperialist aggression in Vietnam has nearly bankrupted the U.S economy that Nixon had no choice but to remove the U.S dollar from the gold standard and thus started the era of “floating currency” (placing the value of any currency to the mercy of “market forces”).

Coupled with its “open door economic policy” (giving “preferential concessions” to favored allies in Europe (Marshall Plan) and Asia (like Japan after the war; South Korea and Taiwan during their rise to “tiger economy” status in the late ‘70s to the ‘80s) by opening its domestic market to their exports, the U.S position as the leading economic power continues to deteriorate

(This is the “policy” that Pres. Donald Trump wants to “review” thru his ‘America First’ slogan during the 2015 U.S presidential campaign).

But no matter how aggressive any U.S president can be in protecting U.S economic interests first, the fact of the matter today is that, the USA has a mind-boggling debt of over $21 TRILLION DOLLARS! By some estimate, this is more than THREE TIMES the actual value of the entire U.S economy.

Thus, again, the PWC projection that the US economy is on the decline and would most likely be relegated from the top spot to the embarrassing third spot by 2050 is not entirely off the mark. For the USA, today, has become a debtor nation — without equal.

* * *

But going back to our own concerns, how do we, Filipinos, go about achieving the projection made by PWC?

That by 2050, we would even be “richer” compared to our ASEAN neighbors like Thailand (21st place), Vietnam (22nd place) and Malaysia (24th place)?

When today, the fact of the matter is that we are being left behind by these neighbors in making our economy bigger and better in terms of infrastructure, legislation, technology, etc., etc., etc.?

The “answer” is quite simple — we should start really thinking for ourselves, for what is better and best for us Filipinos. In other words, we should henceforth stop “anchoring” our nation’s fate to that of the United States, with whom we never received any “fair shake” despite over 200 years now of our “friendship” with them.

Such being the case and in pursuit of our economic position projected by PWC, the only logical — and sane decision — to make is to exploit the far-reaching positive implications of our new-found closeness with China under Pres. Duterte.

For let us all be clear about two things, dear fellows.

First, despite pronouncement by U.S officials praising our “long standing, historical friendship” with each other and despite affirming that our alliance, under the ‘Mutual Defense Treaty’ (MDT) is “ironclad,” our national security is way below their order of priorities and our economic growth for our own sake is the thing that they never wanted to happen.

Second, the prudent policy to pursue is to follow where the wind of history is blowing. And as far as everyone is concerned, the world’s economic future would be under the guidance of China.

Only by removing the “blinders” imposed over us by over 200 years of Western influence biased against China and the Chinese people can we “get there.”

In other words, we should start appreciating the positive things that we can get from our close relationship with China rather than highlighting the negative issues, which, to begin with, can be discussed and settled among us, Asians.

Abangan!