Book information: Marites Dañguilan Vitug and Camille Elemia, Unrequited Love: Duterte’s China Embrace, Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2024.

About the Book: Unrequited Love: Duterte’s China Embrace is about the story of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s pivot to China, the factors that influenced him, the loans and grants for infrastructure projects as well as the unfulfilled pledges. It  chronicles the attempts of China to influence the military, the political parties, the media and the public.  The book looks at the impact of the policy shift on various facets of governance including the rule of law and the West Philippine Sea. Drawn on archival research and field interviews, the story begins with the roots of Duterte’s affection for China, and leads to the maritime features that are the major sources of tension between Manila and Beijing, and the pushback by key government institutions.

Presenter: Marites Dañguilan Vitug
Marites Dañguilan Vitug, a leading Filipino investigative journalist and author, is editor-at-large for Rappler. She was editor of Newsbreak magazine, a trailblazer in Philippine investigative journalism. She has written nine books. Her latest is Unrequited Love: Duterte’s China Embrace, co-written with Camille Elemia. Others include  Rock Solid: How the Philippines Won its Maritime Case Against China, Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court which exposed critical weaknesses in the country’s highest court, a first in the Philippines by a journalist; and Power from the Forest: The Politics of Logging. Marites is also among the contributors of a 2021 book, Maritime Issues and Regional Order in the Indo-Pacific, published by Palgrave/Macmillan and a 1998 book, The Politics of Environment in Southeast Asia, published by Routledge. Marites has a degree in A.B. Broadcast Communication from the University of the Philippines and a diploma in world politics from the London School of Economics. She was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University and a recipient of fellowships from the University of San Diego in California—the Pacific Leadership Fellow; the Rockefeller Foundation Writing Fellowship in Bellagio Center, Lago di Como, Italy; the International House in Tokyo—the Asia Leadership Fellow Program; the Australian National University, University of Kyoto and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. She has won the National Book Award and various awards for reporting on Philippine justice, security, and political affairs, including the Courage in Journalism Award from the US-based International Women’s Media Foundation.

Discussant: Yusuke Takagi
Yusuke Takagi is an Associate Professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo, Japan. He received the Doctor of the Science of Law from Keio University. Before joining GRIPS, he worked at De La Salle University – Manila and the Embassy of Japan in the Philippines. He teaches graduate courses on political science focusing on Southeast Asian countries as well as other emerging countries. He is the author of Central Banking as State Building: Policymakers and Their Nationalism in the Philippines, 1933-1964, which won the 34th Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Award and was a finalist for the 36th Philippine National Book Awards in 2017.

Moderator: Julie de los Reyes (CSEAS)