POGOs: A Trojan horse locked in Manila’s rich ghettos

Photo from ABS-CBN News

By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2020 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

As the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) now placed under the category of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), it deals with online gaming for mainland Chinese gamblers, still considered an illicit operation in China, the golden goose industry employs more than a hundred thousand foreign workers deployed in the country’s major cities, leaving one-third of the workforce to Filipino locals.

Philippine enforcement agencies on public safety and national security quietly work in silo, avoiding a stronger unified command, indulging every bit of compartmentalized strategy in cracking down POGO-related crimes and espionage, skewed to deficiency against organized crimes committed by Chinese nationals, occupying burgeoning cities of Metro Manila construed as a Trojan horse.

POGOs vividly recreate ghettos stirring an imagery of patriarchal hegemony of transnational enterprises imagined in a confluent stringent mafia culture. Unrestricted gambling may extend beyond the glorification of ‘godfathers’ and ratifies trafficking of drugs, humans and weapons.

The popular amusement and leisure offshore gaming magnifies social inequalities and economic injustices that capriciously levels off the playing field of escorting modus that leads to bribery scheme locally dubbed as ‘pastillas’, cyber fraud, contract killing, emerging economic crimes and prostitution. The (re)making of a Chinese ghetto in Metro Manila’s financial districts look auspiciously odd, strategically located in loci that accidentally reconstruct a landscape of cultural acrimony and financial insecurity.   

The influx of Chinese workers attached to diversified businesses opens up to a variety of needs that exclusively cater to their kind and the rest of Filipinos. General precautions on the reverse economic impacts of POGOs subsume greater consideration to the country’s macroeconomic interest.

Economic gray zone

The legitimacy of Chinese offshore gaming’s resumption of operation under the guidelines of the general community quarantine obscured by the coronavirus pandemic is undeniably questioned in spite of the clamour to open up the ailing business. The spike in higher rentals, salaries, and fees for support it unconventionally adds to the country’s gross domestic product has temporarily discredited the momentum of cash flows during the plague. But the Philippine government claims that it could become a milking cow or good source of financial resources to replenish the national coffer to sustain public needs in this trying times. 

Mushrooming online gambling weaves a fabric of major sourpoint amalgamation for the Philippine government and its volatile bilateral relationship with China. Apparently professed as economic gray zone but ambiguously deceived as influence operations swelling to acts of money laundering and tax evasion.

Optimizing the robust trade relations of the Philippines and China, the rise of Chinese companies operating in the archipelago marks proximity in distance and affordability of labor. The real score in booming realty demand and retail spending for Chinese nationals shaped rapid ventures of various sunrise industries and start-ups in the country yet the social backlash that POGOs brought in banes latitude of unpopular policy for its transitional economic gains and explosive liquid assets.

Contrary to China’s total ban of the illegal gambling operation, it constructively appealed to the Philippines to halt any POGO-related activities, a credence that rescinds Chinese moral and social fabric. A successful persuasion of the same economic restriction to cement a strong social cohesion was addressed by Phnom Penh when it banned last year Chinese-owned online gambling in Cambodia. 

Island chain strategy and Trojan virus

On August 2019, the Chinese embassy in Manila raised grave concern for Chinese citizens working in offshore gaming businesses as Philippine authority proposed self-contained POGO boroughs to limit the interaction of local and foreign workers, a prepared blueprint preferably outside of the metropolis to the dismay of Chinese officials that it infringes the rights of foreign operators.   

The most controversial investment eyed for POGO economic hubs raised a red flag on the country’s national security when Chinese investors strategically pointed out Fuga Island in Cagayan province, and adjacent Grande and Chiquita islands in Subic Bay, Zambales province, in a bid to build a Chinese smart city in the northern frontier of Luzon.

A fruition of the Philippines’ bilateral trade relations repackaged under China’s Belt Road Initiative, the planned mega-project would accelerate the value of yuan denomination, advantageously aimed at supporting the giant neighbour’s geopolitical agenda. If approved at that time, the conversion of the three islands into affluent Chinese ghettos makes a gateway of opportunity for China’s naval coordinates as it widens access to the first island chain that connects with Taiwan, a lucid vision for possible reunification with mainland China’s renegade province and lost territory.

The dynamic presence of POGO centres sprouting near military headquarters have conceivably heightened alarms and trepidations on espionage, partly blamed for poor urban-planning and conversion of military bases into commercial spaces. Chinese workers playing chameleon role as spy is not far-fetched from reality. The dangers lurking behind the sophistication of disruptive technology used by offshore gaming operators can invade and pervade critical infrastructures of the country.

Perceived as a Trojan horse, currently imbedded in the Philippines’ vector of economic security, the controversial online gaming industry’s multi-dimensional implications and domino-effect could impinge on public safety and national security. Like a Trojan malware infecting users’ devices or attacking routers of wireless networks, the offshore gaming operations have temporarily propelled economic stimulus to reach projected financial output, birthing to social malady and cyber vulnerability.