EARLIER this month, when Philippine President Benigno Aquino declared that Chinese New Year would be an official public holiday, he justified it by referring to the need to respect the nation’s cultural diversity.

“The joint celebration is a manifestation of our solidarity with our Chinese Filipino brethren who have been part of our lives in many respects as a country and as a people,” the President said. Chinese New Year, he continued, will henceforth be celebrated annually, beginning on Jan 23 next year.

But was the need to respect cultural diversity really so compelling? Scholars note that only about 2 per cent of the Philippine population is truly ethnic Chinese – a point which probably accounts in part for the reluctance of previous governments to add the festival to an already long list of holidays citizens enjoy.

Indeed, some in the business community reportedly opposed the move on the grounds that the country already had too many official holidays. Chinese New Year has now become one of 17 anniversaries and festivals recognised by the Philippine government. The list includes Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter as well the Muslim festivals of Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr.

With 16 listed public holidays for next year, Thailand is the only country in South-east Asia that approaches the Philippines in terms of the number of days off for next year. Singapore has just 11.

Another way of looking at things, however, is to ask why it has taken so long for the government in Manila to make the decision. After all, Philippine society has historically been more tolerant towards its ethnic Chinese minority than most other South-east Asian countries. This is illustrated by the fact that the rate of inter-marriage between Chinese settlers and indigenous groups is among the highest in the region.

The country has a large mestizo (mixed race) population, which some estimates put at close to 20 per cent of the population. Chinese Filipinos are unique in South-east Asia in being overwhelmingly Christian, a point that has added greatly to the ease with which they have been accepted into the predominantly Catholic country.

Anti-Chinese sentiment, however, has never been very far below the surface. Government-sanctioned discrimination was common in the Spanish and American colonial periods, as well as during the Japanese Occupation. After independence in 1946, a backlash against the perceived domination of the Chinese in business and finance led then-President Ramon Magsaysay’s government to restrict immigration from China. This nationalist policy, which emphasised the need to promote an indigenous business class, reached its peak during the term of president Carlos Garcia (1957-1961).

Governments since then have generally been more tolerant. But president Ferdinand Marcos (1965-1986) introduced policies limiting the number of hours that could be used for studying the Chinese language in Chinese-run schools. Anti- Chinese riots also broke out briefly in 1992, when local businessman Armando Ducat accused local Chinese of rising to the top of the economic ladder through bribery and extortion.

Today, however, the national mood seems far more accepting. President Aquino can trace his ancestral roots through his mother (Corazon Aquino, the hero of the 1986 People Power uprising) to a village not far from Xiamen city in China’s Fujian province. Interestingly, this lineage does not appear to trouble the President’s indigenous supporters.

Recognising Chinese New Year may also be a way of promoting national reconciliation. Mr Aquino’s move is certainly reminiscent of Mrs Megawati Sukarnoputri’s 2002 decision to declare Chinese New Year a public holiday in Indonesia when she was president. Mrs Megawati made her announcement as the nation came to terms with the anti-Chinese violence that accompanied the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998.

That said, economics also appears to have been an important motivating factor. Chinese New Year is the peak season for Hong Kong and Chinese tourists to visit the Philippines. But with tensions between Manila and Beijing rising once again over rival territorial claims in the South China Sea, the Philippines has been concerned that diplomatic developments could lead prospective tourists to believe that they are not welcome.

Hong Kong is also a vital source of foreign investment. Partly as a result of the global economic downturn, such investment fell 19 per cent to just US$810 million (S$1 billion) in the first eight months of this year.

In June, when one of the Aquino administration’s political allies called for a boycott of Chinese-made products in response to Beijing’s muscle-flexing, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda was quick to reject the idea. “It is not our policy to boycott Chinese products,” he told the media. “Yes, we’ve seen a surge of nationalism... but we have to temper our comments,” he added, asserting that “most of us have Chinese blood one way or another”.

Relatives can sometimes be useful, even if you do not always agree with them.

(C) Singapore Press Holdings Limited