The Philippines has over 7,000 islands with a combined land area of some 320,000 square kilometers, which is 8.3 times that of Taiwan. It has a population of 110 million, more than 80% of whom are Catholic, and with a median age of 24.7 years it enjoys a demographic dividend. Its two official languages are English and Tagalog. The economy is based primarily on the service sector, and the country is also a major supplier of migrant labor to the rest of the world. This description indicates that the Philippines and Taiwan are two very different countries, but if you take a closer look you will discover that we have deep ties and much in common.

Close enough to wave hello

Wallace M.G. Chow, who took up his post in June 2023 as head of mission at the Taipei Economic & Cultural Office in the Philippines, tells us that when he once visited the Province of Cagayan on the northern coast of Luzon, the provincial governor informed him that the coastal residents there could hear Taiwanese music on radio broadcasts from Southern Taiwan, and lots of ­locals could sing Taiwanese pop songs. Says Chow: “After China, the Philippines is the closest country to Taiwan.”

Geographical proximity has translated into close ties between the two nations. Meteorologists tell us that most of the typhoons that hit Taiwan each year pass first through the Philippines, while geologists note that both of our countries are located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, which means we have deep similarities in terms of geog­raphy, geological structure, atmospheric environment, and seismic activity. Accordingly, there are many areas where our scientists can engage in collaborative research.

Oral histories of the Tao indigenous people recall that their ancestors came to Orchid Island from the nearby Batan Islands. Among the projects carried out by the Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation over the past two years, one has involved the building of a traditional ­ipanitika boat, which will be rowed to the Batan Islands in a re-enactment of the trips people made in times past.

Wallace M.G. Chow, Taiwan’s representative in the Philippines, notes that Taiwan is the Philippines’ eighth largest trading partner, eighth largest export market, and eighth largest source of imports.

In the 1990s a group of Taiwanese-owned businesses responded to the Taiwan government’s Go South Policy by setting up operations in the Philippines. Most of them located in the Subic Bay Freeport Zone.

A misplaced bit of Latin America

A direct flight from Taoyuan International Airport takes about two hours and 20 minutes to arrive at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila. The weather in the Philippines is sweltering, just like in Taiwan, but in many other ways Manila feels starkly different from Taipei. In Metro Manila, perhaps due to the influence of Western colonial rule, the architecture shows a mix of East and West, which is why Manila is known as “the most European-style metropolis in Asia.” The business and financial center of Makati, just like Taipei’s Xinyi District, bristles with commercial and office towers, while traffic whizzes about non-stop in the streets below. Unlike in Taipei, however, one sees security guards stationed along the streets, armed to the teeth, and you have to submit to security checks to enter office buildings, shopping centers, or mass transit stations. And quite often, police dogs sniff your bags in search of illegal substances. Such experiences would be unthinkable on the easygoing streets of Taipei.

In Manila, landmarks from Spanish-era colonial rule are everywhere to be found in the famed Intramuros district. In the northwest corner of Intramuros lies old Fort Santiago, and nearby stands Manila Cathedral. The Palacio del Gobernador is just to the south, and we find the Casas Consistoriales (city hall) to the east, while in the middle of all these lies the Plaza de Roma. This layout is typical of a Spanish colonial city, and brings to mind a passage in A Brief History of the Philippines by Fabio Yuchun Lee, associate professor in the Institute of History at National ­Tsing Hua University (NTHU): “As a matter of geography, the Philippines may be considered a part of Southeast Asia, but in fact the path of its historical development isn’t closely connected with that of other Southeast Asian nations. It seems more like a collection of Latin American islands that were somehow dropped into East Asia.”

The Intramuros district lies in the heart of old Manila. “Intramuros” is Spanish for “the area inside the walls.” Signs of the city’s colonial past are everywhere to be seen in this district.

A scene from Manila’s Intramuros district.

A sense of déja vu

When we travel to NTHU to visit with Fabio Lee, we are half expecting this man, with his lifelong passion for the Age of Discovery, to cut a swashbuckling figure like Captain Jack Sparrow, so it comes as some surprise to find a genteel scholar dressed in suit and tie. Nevertheless, he speaks with enthusiasm: “As the Hokkien people and the Spanish interacted, Taiwan gradually began to emerge as an actor on the international stage.”

In the Age of Discovery, Europeans expanded eastward to engage in maritime commerce. The Spanish established a presence in Manila in 1571, at a time when the Chinese economy was booming, a century after the founding of the Ming Dynasty. The copper coins then in circulation were not in sufficient supply to support the new transaction volumes. Some new medium of exchange was needed, and the Spanish just happened to arrive with large amounts of Latin American silver. This was minted into the silver coins which became the standard currency of the time. In this manner, Spaniards from the Iberian Peninsula and Hokkien people from Fujian Province struck up a mutually beneficial arrangement, trading with each other in Manila to suit their respective needs. In the process, explains Lee, Taiwan began to make its appearance in the annals of world history.

Chinese people who engaged in overseas trade began to adjust their trade routes. Each December and January, large numbers of Chinese ships would depart Fujian bound for Manila. Sailing through the Taiwan Strait, they would pass Penghu and visit Taiwan’s southern coast before heading south across the Bashi Strait to reach the island of Luzon. The Spanish, for their part, would depart from Manila, head to the north coast of Luzon, pass through the Bashi Strait, then catch a ride on the northbound Kuroshio Current to make their way up Taiwan’s east coast before crossing the Pacific Ocean to get to their colonies in South America. Lee reminds us that in the Age of Sail, ships had to put to sea in the right season and catch the right ocean currents. Taiwan was an important provisioning stop on the way.

Fort Santiago, built in 1511, is one of the most important historic landmarks in the Philippines.

The people of the Philippines have a median age of 24.7, giving the country a demographic dividend.

Cars, motorcycles, jeepneys, and tricycles are among the wide variety of vehicles that zip around the streets of Manila, which is famed for its traffic jams.

Heading for far shores

People of Chinese ethnicity make up a considerable percentage of the Philippine population, a reflection of the fact that the Chinese people have long found it necessary to pull up stakes and strive for better lives abroad. Their tales are told in vivid detail at the Museum of Chinese in Philippine Life (Bahay Tsinoy), which is located in the Intramuros district.

It wasn’t until after the Spanish established control over the Philippines that the Chinese started settling there in large numbers. Most of the settlers came from the Zhangzhou and Quan­zhou areas of Fujian Province, on China’s southeast coast. It was ethnic Chinese who supported the Spanish colonial economy and helped the newly arrived Spanish to build the city of Manila. The museum’s exhibits show how Chinese artisanry can be observed even today in Manila’s architecture. In the wooden doors of the oldest structure in Manila—San Agustin Church—there are decorative elements such as stylized clouds and dragon-like scrollwork. Meanwhile, the stone lions outside the entrance to the church are just what the Chinese have ­always used to ward off evil. All these details are clear indicators of Chinese influence in the building of the church.

The imprint of Chinese culture can also be seen in Philippine cooking implements and foods, which in many cases are known by Hokkien names. Examples include bithay (rice sieve), siyanse (spatula), bihon (rice vermicelli), lumpiya (spring rolls), and batsoy (noodle soup made with pork offal, crushed pork cracklings, chicken stock, beef loin, and round noodles). As we check out the unfamiliar scenes of the Philippines, subtle hints like these show us that there is actually something familiar about the place.

Street stalls of every description are a standard part of the scenery in any Philippine city.

Perhaps because the Philippines features a fusion of Western colonial influences, Manila is known as “the most European-style metropolis in Asia.”

Philippine presence in Taiwan

With these historical links still palpably present, contemporary economic ties between Taiwan and the Philippines have grown very strong, as well.

Says Wallace Chow: “There are 150,000 migrant workers from the Philippines in Taiwan. Besides those serving as domestic help, most work in electronics or high-tech factories, and they contribute significantly to Taiwan’s economic development.” Section 3 of Zhongshan North Road in Taipei is known as “Little Manila” because Philippine migrant workers gather there every weekend. St. Christopher’s Church celebrates mass in English and Tagalog, and is thus an important source of spiritual comfort for Filipinos in Taiwan. In addition, King Wan Shop Mall is a place where Filipinos feel very much at home and can find every little household item they could possibly need.

Hsinchu is another place that hosts a large concentration of migrant workers from the Philippines. Taiwan Panorama has reported in the past on how Mario Subeldia, the first migrant worker to be licensed as a street artist in Taiwan, has gotten together with other Filipinos to hold beauty pageants in Taiwan. Asuka Lee, editorial director of Taiwan’s independent media platform Migrants’ Park, says that beauty pageants are a national pastime in the Philippines, and because so many migrant workers are based in Hsinchu, that area has become a hotbed for beauty pageants among Philippine migrant workers, who take to the runway with enthusiasm on many a weekend, thus making their adopted homes feel more like the land of their birth.

The Subic Bay Freeport Zone used to be a US naval base. It is a deep-water port, which is advantageous for moving freight.

Investing in the Philippines

Economic and trade ties between Taiwan and the Philippines are getting closer all the time. Wallace Chow points out that for the Philippines, Taiwan is the eighth largest trading partner, eighth largest export market, and eighth largest source of imports.

Back in the 1990s numerous Taiwanese businesses responded to the Taiwan government’s Go South Policy (the forerunner of today’s New Southbound Policy) by setting up operations in the Philippines. But within just a few years the Chinese economy rapidly rose to prominence and firms moving offshore were much more inclined to head west to China than to the south. Taiwanese investments in the Philippines fell way off, but the initial round of companies that set up there did develop stably.

Tsai Sheng Lin, an administrative manager at Hudson Outdoor Industrial Inc., tells us that his father was among the first generation of Taiwanese businesspeople who ­invested in the Philippines in response to the Go South Policy. His family’s firm is active in a traditional economic sector, and in recent years business has not been going as well as in the past. After discussing the situation with his father, they agreed that Tsai should pursue his own career. He decided to stay in the Philippines because he felt optimistic about future prospects there.

Tsai now works at a Taiwanese-owned business whose parent company primarily produces sporting goods. Sometime around the year 2000 the company began manufacturing water­tight bags for outdoor activities for a US brand. In 2012 the company set up a factory in Vietnam, and then in 2019, to diversify risk, it set up a production line in the Philippines.

The company decided to locate in the Subic Bay Freeport Zone (SBFZ). Says Tsai: “Subic Bay used to be a US naval base. It’s a deep-water port, which makes it convenient to unload incoming freight. There are more scheduled freighter services into Manila Bay, but if you land freight in Manila then it takes time and money to ship it overland from Manila to Subic Bay. The trip takes at least three to four hours. On top of that, the entire zone is a freeport, and our company processes imported materials, so we don’t have to deal with bonded zone procedures. This makes Subic Bay more advantageous for us, and more convenient.”

Best Chang originally went to the Philippines 11 years ago to learn English. He stayed on, and now manages a logistics company. He became president of the Subic Bay Taiwan Chamber of Commerce last year. In this capacity he constantly runs around meeting with visiting delegations and seeking to create more links between Taiwan and the Philippines. There are currently 85 Taiwanese-owned businesses operating in the SBFZ, and the number of Taiwanese (including their family members) living in Subic Bay totals about 500 people. “The China–US trade war was already underway in 2017, and many companies were being affected by demands from US manufacturers to move their production lines out of China.” For that reason, many companies have recently been exploring the possibility of investing in the SBFZ. It appears that there is a sure possibility of further development in the freeport zone.

Best Chang, president of the Subic Bay Taiwan Chamber of Commerce, says the US–China trade war has prompted many companies to explore the possibility of investing in the Philippines.

Tsai Sheng Lin, an administrative manager at Hudson Outdoor Industrial Inc., notes that Filipino employees enjoy the advantage of speaking good English, but adds that business owners still need to provide good training to develop their professional skills.

Long-forgotten historical records

Apart from everything described above, there is yet another link between Taiwan and the Philippines that cannot go unmentioned.

In 2017 Fabio Lee, with support from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, organized an academic team to make a survey of historical records relating to early inter­actions between Spain, Taiwan, and China. In an archival repository at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, they discovered a collection of manuscripts created by ethnic Chinese in the Philippines, and found that on the catalog for this collection someone had made the ­following ­annotation: “Vale muy poco” (“of little value”). This piqued his curiosity. Why had an archivist assessed the value of this collection? He looked through the documents and was astonished to find a dictionary that sets out Chinese and Spanish entries, shows Mandarin and Hokkien pronunciations, and explains the meanings in Spanish. An entry for “Keelung and Tamsui,” for example, describes these places in Spanish as “Tierra de Isla Hermosa ado estan los españoles” (meaning “the part of Formosa where the Spaniards are”). Due to the use of the present tense in the Spanish, Lee concluded that the records in this collection must have been created during the period when the Spanish occupied Taiwan’s northern coast (1626–1642).

After this discovery, the team commenced a multi-year research project that has resulted in the publication of the multi-volume Hokkien Spanish Historical Document Series. To date, these are the earliest known documents to result from linguistic contacts between Spanish and Hokkien speakers.

Lee notes that one dictionary entry is an entire phrase written out to reflect Hokkien pronunciation—“Ca Goa Ta Tung Lang Oe” (meaning “teach me how to speak Chinese”). The team members deduce that Spanish colonial missionaries active at that time in the Philippines must have intended to learn Chinese from people in the local Chinese community so that they could go preach or do business in China. The content of the manuscripts is very much rooted in everyday life. Many of the vocabulary items found therein are still in use today, and we can see similarities with terms used currently in Taiwan.

The work of Lee and his multinational research team earned them recognition from the Spanish royal family. The historical records that they discovered from over 400 years ago document the efforts of Spanish and Hokkien speakers during the Age of Discovery to interact and learn each other’s languages. These records have given us a peek into a part of our past that had long lain hidden, but there must surely be other traces of Taiwan–­Philippine ties that await discovery by inquisitive scholars.

Professor Fabio Lee notes that as the Hokkien people and the Spanish interacted in centuries past, Taiwan gradually began to emerge as an actor on the international stage. His discovery of a collection of manuscripts created by ethnic Chinese in the Philippines provides stunning evidence of Hokkien–Spanish interactions in the Age of Discovery.

Subtle clues throughout Manila provide hints to Taiwan’s cultural links with the Philippines. Stylized clouds and dragon-like decorative elements in the wooden doors of San Agustin Church, and stone lions outside the entrance, give powerful evidence of Chinese influence in the building of the church.