China’s Education Ministry issued a safety warning for Chinese students in the Philippines after what it said were a series of criminal incidents targeting them.
The brief warning Friday did not identify any specific incidents but told students to increase their safety awareness should they choose to study in the Philippines. The number of Chinese students in the country was not given but enrolments have fallen to just a few hundred in recent years, according to the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post.
Relations between the governments of China and the Philippines are particularly tense due to disputes over maritime claims in the South China Sea, which China claims almost in its entirety. China has used water cannons and other non-lethal shipboard deterrents to drive off Philippine fishing boats.
Undersecretary Claire Castro of the Presidential Communications Office said on Friday that China has the right to issue such an advisory but underscored that the crime rate in the Philippines has been falling and “safety and security in the Philippines, we can say, have been improving as far as we are concerned.”
Police response to public concerns over crime has been fast. Crimes sparked by Chinese online gambling have declined or have been eradicated and many Chinese suspects have been deported by the Philippines, Castro told a daily news briefing.
In February a 14-year-old Chinese student was kidnapped in Manila by a Chinese-led gang, which killed his driver and cut off the student’s finger in a bid to force his parents to pay a huge ransom. The Philippine interior secretary said the student’s family and the Chinese leader of the kidnappers were allegedly former operators of lucrative online gambling outfits.
Politically, China has dismissed a U.N.-backed court decision in The Hague that ruled out most of China’s claims in the South China Sea and has expressed resentment over close ties between the U.S. and Manila.
China often disrupts cultural and economic ties to register their discontent over actions by foreign governments.
In April, China issued a similar warning about the risk to Chinese students in the United States.
