The Philippines has issued a formal diplomatic protest to China over an AI-generated video published by state-controlled media that depicts Filipinos as a monkey being shot and drowned by the Chinese coast guard.
The 58-second video, posted by China Daily on July 10, shows a monkey in Filipino traditional dress being forced by the United States and Japan to parrot the 2016 arbitral award on the South China Sea. When the monkey refuses, it is thrown into the ocean and shot with high-pressure water cannons by Chinese vessels. A whale surfaces and calls the international ruling “litter.”
“This mockery of the lawful 2016 Arbitral Award and the video’s glorification of violence against the Filipino people and soldiers expose the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of China’s propaganda machine,” Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs demanded the “immediate takedown” of the video and related cartoons, directing its protest to China Daily’s editor-in-chief and conveying it in person to Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan.
The video was published exactly 10 years after the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines on virtually every point. The 2016 ruling declared China’s expansive “nine-dash line” claim to have no legal standing under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. China has never accepted the ruling, calling it “null and void.”
This month, 14 nations issued a joint statement calling the award “final and legally binding” and rejecting “destabilizing” actions in the South China Sea. The European Union reaffirmed it as a “landmark decision in the peaceful settlement of disputes.”
China Daily’s video represents the opposite of peaceful settlement. The DFA’s statement said the content “went beyond legitimate political debate by resorting to demeaning, dehumanizing, and racist depictions of Filipinos.” It warned that such material “only widens distrust between the two countries.”
The video did not emerge in a vacuum. Chinese coast guard vessels have been ramming Philippine supply ships and firing high-pressure water cannons at Philippine patrol boats for years. A serious confrontation near Thitu Island in October 2025 left Philippine vessels damaged and the bilateral relationship near its lowest point.
The Philippines, a US treaty ally, has responded by deepening its military cooperation with Washington and Tokyo. Manila now hosts nine US military bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, a fact that China cites as evidence that Philippine actions are merely an extension of American policy.
The Diplomat, in its analysis of the video, noted that state media productions “accurately reflect the Chinese tendency to view Philippine actions as an outgrowth of US policy” but warned that treating the Philippines as a US proxy “does not advance peaceful resolution and is fast deepening the alienation between the two neighbors.”
The protest is unlikely to result in the video being taken down. China Daily is not a rogue outlet, it is the official English-language voice of the Chinese Communist Party. The video reflects the government’s view, not a misstep by an editor. But the Philippines had to make the protest anyway, to record for the international community that it will not accept being portrayed this way, even as it has no power to stop the guns, or the propaganda, aimed at it.