The Philippines has issued a formal protest to the Chinese government over an AI-generated video created by a Chinese state media outlet that portrays the nation as a monkey, describing the depiction as “racist.”
The bizarre 58-second video, which was posted online by the state-controlled China Daily on July 10, shows a monkey in Filipino traditional dress being forced by the United States and Japan to parrot the arbitral award that was handed down by a tribunal in The Hague in 2016. The award ruled that China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea were invalid under international maritime law.
When the monkey refuses to obey the U.S. and Japan, it is thrown into the ocean and then shot with a high-pressure water cannon by the China Coast Guard, before a whale surfaces and describes the arbitral award as “litter.”
In a characteristically forthright statement, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said the video offered a “revealing insight into what the Chinese communist apparatus thinks of the Filipino people.”
“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,” he said.
