The Philippines has condemned the “dehumanising and racist” portrayal of the country as a timid monkey strong-armed by the US and Japan to take Beijing on over the South China Sea.
Last week, China Daily posted an AI-generated video featuring a monkey in a Filipino shirt. It screams as arms bearing the Japanese and US flags shove it onto a rickety karaoke stage set up in a boat.
After it gets scolded for singing the wrong song, it pulls out a sheet reading “South China Sea arbitration award”. It is then flung into the sea and blasted by a water cannon.
Tense stand-offs and occasional violent confrontations between Philippine and Chinese vessels in the disputed waters have grown in recent years.
At the centre of tensions between Manila and Beijing are the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal (known as Huangyan Island in China), a little more than 100 miles (160km) from the Philippines and 500 miles from China.
The Chinese Coast Guard routinely uses high-pressure water cannons against Philippine vessels in the disputed shoals, which have led to damage and injuries.
“Disagreement over legal and political issues does not justify resorting to disturbing imagery, which has no place in the civil public discourse of a responsible state,” Manila’s foreign ministry said, demanding that the clip be removed.
“Such imagery and misinformation only serve to widen the distrust between the Philippines and China,” it added.
The Philippine defence ministry called the video “contemptible propaganda”, saying it “exposes the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of China’s propaganda machine”.
“The recent spate of schizophrenic behaviour of the Chinese Communist Party is too clear to disregard or ignore,” defence secretary Gilbert Teodoro said.
The video, posted on 10 July, remains on China Daily’s Facebook page at time of writing.
The past week marks a decade since the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favour of the Philippines, concluding that China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea had no legal basis under international law.
Beijing has ignored the ruling, saying the tribunal lacks jurisdiction.
Tensions between Beijing and Manila have sharply escalated in recent years due to their overlapping claims, with each side accusing the other of provocations and altercations at sea, including some involving weapons such as swords, spears and knives.