I’VE realized that there is one major reason for Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr.’s belligerence toward China, other than using Sinophobia as a stepping stone for his delusion to become president in 2028, or being totally brainwashed by the United States:
He is shockingly ignorant of our neighbor’s extremely advanced economy, to the extent that it has overtaken the US and Europe in several technology fields. In his deluded mind, China is just a bigger Vietnam, ruled by what he calls “communist dictators,” whose economy is based on manufacturing cheap products.
In his Facebook posts, he shows that he is stuck in the 1960s view of China as a backward economy, even admonishing Philippine business “to stop getting their supplies from China.” In Teodoro’s mind, if China is not so economically advanced, he can provoke it to wage war against us, in which conflict the US is bound to defend us.*
I’ve written two columns narrating how Chinese companies are dominant here in technology-based industries. First is online shopping, which two China-linked companies — Lazada and Shopee — dominate. Second is the mobile payments industry, which will create a cashless, more efficient economy, which two Chinese companies — Alipay in GCash and Tencent in Maya (formerly PayMaya) — provide the technology and even capital. (Tencent also has an indirect share in the new mobile payments company of the Gokongweis, GoTyme).
The growth of the mobile payments industry has been astounding: from just 20 percent of digital retail transactions in 2020, mobile payments rose to 65 percent in 2025, surpassing credit and debit transactions’ share of 37 percent.
Blame our elites, and our entire history through Spanish and American colonialism, if we haven’t developed enough to run such companies without Chinese firms.
Chinese firms have come to dominate mobile payments, as they developed the technology suited to China — and to us.
China leapfrogged the American-dominated credit-card era. The US already possessed a massive and mature card infrastructure. Most Chinese — as well as Filipino — consumers did not have credit cards, nor would banks issue them to those not in the upper-income class — BDO, for instance, had even rejected my application for a credit card, severely wounding my ego.
Genius
Chinese tech firms’ genius was that they adopted the QR code — invented by a Japanese for tracking components in car manufacturing way back in 1994 — as the basis for their mobile payments system. The QR code — a two-dimensional barcode consisting of small black-and-white squares arranged in a square grid — carries the information on the merchant to which a GCash or Maya user will be making payments without the credit-card issuing bank as the “middleman.” Thus, it is way faster (and safer) than a credit-card transaction, and can be done through the user’s mobile-phone GCash or Maya app.
QR codes removed the merchant equipment barrier. Traditional cards historically required dedicated payment terminals and acquiring arrangements. In contrast, a merchant could accept an Alipay or WeChat Pay payment with a printed QR code and a phone. This low-cost solution spread to street stalls, taxis, small stores and even to street vendors.
The platforms in China became ecosystems, rather than payment utilities alone. Shopping, money transfers, transport, bills, reservations and financial services encouraged frequent everyday use. More customers brought more merchants; more merchants increased the platforms’ usefulness. Research from the Bank for International Settlements also shows how QR-payment records could help small businesses build credit histories.
Chinese companies have internationalized their technology, with Filipino tourists in Hong Kong amazed that even street vendors accept GCash and Maya payments. In October 2025, Ant International said Alipay+ connected about 1.8 billion user accounts through 40 partner payment services across acceptance markets exceeding 100 countries and regions. This reach is not the same as 1.8 billion direct Alipay users. In February 2026, Reuters reported talks concerning potential interoperability between India’s UPI and Alipay+, potentially opening the second-biggest market in the world to the Chinese firm.
The central lesson is that Chinese innovators prospered by designing payments for the circumstances of their market: mobile-first consumers, millions of small merchants, limited traditional card penetration and powerful existing digital ecosystems. They did not merely create a better credit card; they changed the way money circulates in everyday commerce.
Ignorant
Yet an ignorant defense secretary, Teodoro, has publicly urged Filipinos to reduce their reliance on “Chinese goods and businesses, that other suppliers can be developed and domestic manufacturing expanded.”
Does he think US firms can replace Alipay and Tencent in GCash and Maya? It is shocking that the Philippine defense secretary is so ignorant about developments in the world.
US and European payment companies do possess technology on par with that of the Chinese tech firms. The reality, though, is that GCash and Maya have already developed a huge commercial network for their payments systems. GCash has 6 million subscribed merchants and Maya over a million, and each has its unique QR codes. US firms taking over these two mobile payments firms won’t be given access to these codes — unless it is a friendly takeover, which is unlikely.
Customers use a wallet because their relatives, shops and service providers already accept it. GCash and Maya’s millions of registered merchants and social sellers make it difficult for a new entrant to create the same reach merely by offering superior software.
A real possibility is that if Teodoro ever succeeds in provoking a military conflict between China and us, the Chinese firms will close down their operations — forcing 7 million merchants to accept only cash. GCash and Maya can’t go to the courts — as war is always a force majeure invalidating business contracts. There will be outrage from the sari-sari stores to the biggest merchants, such as SM.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that Western payment technology can compete with that of Alipay and Tencent. The insurmountable problem is building customer trust, distribution and an attractive ecosystem.
It’s not only in mobile payments technology in which China leads in the world. China’s dominance is pronounced in electric vehicles and batteries (think: BYD, which has the Ayalas as its partner here); solar and wind energy; drones and unmanned aircraft; 5G telecommunications (Huawei is the main supplier for Globe Telecom and Smart); high-speed rail; industrial robotics; and advanced shipbuilding (China accounted for 55 percent of global shipbuilding in 2024).
It really bugs me: Why don’t the Ayalas, the biggest owner of GCash, and Manuel Pangilinan, the ultimate CEO of PLDT’s Maya, lobby Marcos Jr. to fire his defense secretary, who is not just defying his foreign policy that China is a friend, but is endangering their very profitable mobile payments firms? Their failure to do so is another confirmation of my long-standing thesis, that it is not just our political leaders who have failed the nation, but our elites, especially our oligarchs.
* The consensus by scholars and analysts is that the Philippines can’t invoke the Mutual Defense Treaty with the US, for it to defend us in case of an armed conflict in the disputed Spratly Islands. Check out my columns on this topic: https://rigobertotiglao.com/2023/09/06/forget-our-mutual-defense-treaty-with-us/ and https://rigobertotiglao.com/2022/11/28/us-documents-defense-treaty-does-not-cover-spratlys-scarborough/.
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