Ambassador Huang Xilian had a warm and fruitful meeting yesterday with Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri, Senator Win Gatchalian and Senator Robin Padilla.
They exchanged views on further strengthening the relationship between China and the Philippines and discussed practical cooperation on renewable energy, electrical cars, E-commerce, people-to-people and cultural exchanges, as well as cracking down on POGO-related crimes among others.
Ambassador Huang reiterated China’s policy on and firm opposition to POGO.
According to Chinese law and regulations, Chinese citizens gambling overseas, opening casinos to attract Chinese citizens as primary customers constitute gambling crimes.
Criminal liability can be pursued in accordance with the provisions of the Criminal Law of China. Chinese government and law enforcement have been taking tough measures to combat all forms of gambling.
Most of the recent crimes targeted at Chinese citizens in the Philippines are related to POGO. Chinese government cares about and protects the safety and legitimate interests of each and every overseas Chinese citizen.
The Chinese Embassy has been in close communication with the Philippine law enforcement agencies and stepped up cooperation on cracking down POGO-related criminal activities against Chinese citizens in the Philippines.
It is appreciated that relevant Philippine law enforcement agencies rescued a number of Chinese citizens and shut down some POGO companies during their operations.
Crimes induced by and associated with POGO not only harm China’s interests and China-Philippines relations, but also hurt the interests of the Philippines. It is therefore widely believed that social costs of POGO far outweigh its economic benefits to the Philippines in the long run and POGO should be tackled from the root so as to address the social ills in a sweeping manner.
TO FURTHER ELUCIDATE ON the “tourist blacklist” remarks, tourism is an important component of practical cooperation between China and the Philippines which has helped further deepen long-time friendship between the two peoples. Before the Covid-19 pandemic close to two million Chinese nationals traveled to the Philippines in 2019, making China the second largest source of tourists. We expect more Chinese tourists to come to this country after the pandemic.