Unmasking Rodrigo Duterte and his Communist Chinese Connection
Former President Rodrigo Duterte at a Quadcomm hearing on the extra-judicial killings committed during Duterte’s War on Drugs at the House of Representatives on November 13, 2024. Photo from House of Representatives.
By: COL Dencio S. Acop (Ret), PhD, CPP| Published: July 29, 2025
Reading Time: 6 minutes
“The truth shall set us free.”
While fans and supporters of Rodrigo Duterte believe he is a man-like god who did no wrong, so many other people believe otherwise. Duterte has in fact been arrested by the International Police and now faces trial before the International Criminal Court at The Hague for crimes against humanity. His much-awaited trial is due to begin in September 2025.
More specifically, Duterte is accused of being responsible for the murder (extra-judicial killing) of tens of thousands of drug suspects in the Philippines brutally killed through anti-illegal drug operations upon his orders initially as city mayor of Davao then President of the country. But without political color, fear, or favor, what really is the truth behind Duterte? This is an analysis of publicly available information from informed sources.
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The first point is that Rodrigo Duterte was suspected by the military of being a communist sympathizer since 1991 when he was city mayor of Davao. Every member of the Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army who got captured by the military or surrendered pointed to Duterte as the number one communist in Davao.
There were so many killings perpetrated in Davao City that its main market area called Agdao became known as “Nicaragdao”, after Nicaragua which at the time was also riddled with violence during the revolution waged by the Marxist Sandinista rebels against the Nicaraguan government in the 1970s. A year after the Sandinistas took over, they managed to assassinate former President Anastacio Somoza Debayle, a 1946 West Point graduate, to consolidate political power away from the junta of national reconciliation. Nicaragua before the Marxist takeover had been a close ally of the United States through the Somoza family political dynasty from the 1912 Banana Wars.
Military intelligence in Davao observed that after NPA commander Leoncio Pitao (also known as Commander Parago) was killed on June 28, 2015 in an encounter with government troops in Davao City, Mayor Duterte strangely made him a hero. Why was Duterte never sanctioned? An astute and cunning politician, I think Duterte was very good at playing both sides. The same source intimated that Duterte was able to manipulate army generals who frequented his house. Duterte was Davao City mayor from 1988 to 1998, 2001 to 2010, and from 2013 to 2016.
The second point is the fact that the unpatriotic links of Rodrigo Duterte to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are too much to ignore. It is essential to point out that the PRC was in the military’s Order of Battle until Duterte became President in 2016. Then everything changed.
What changed? Suddenly, the Philippines became friendly with Communist China but hostile to its former and long-time ally, the United States. This, despite the fact that the cultural values and way of life of Filipinos, especially religion, are fundamentally opposed to Red China’s, historically and politically.
Duterte wanted the Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines and the United States abolished. Duterte was asking China to make the Philippines its province. He sold Malampaya and Smartmatic to Dennis Uy. It was Uy who was with Duterte when a Chinese telecommunications company was put in place to replace both Globe and Smart.
Philippine Off-Shore Gaming Operations (POGO) bringing in thousands of undocumented Chinese workers suddenly swarmed our local archipelago. These gambling operations may seem like normal in today’s world but not when they have links to the Chinese Triads.
The underground mafia organization, now effectively controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, is into almost all types of global crimes: drug smuggling, human trafficking, forced prostitution, kidnapping, huge well-funded scam farms, POGO, online gambling, “pig butchering” – crypto currency scams, drug mules, and acting as CCP agents influencing politicians through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), control of critical infrastructure, electioneering, etc.
Unfortunately for the Philippines and other countries which fell prey to China’s predatory tactics enabled by treasonous leaders like Duterte, all these have had serious adverse implications to national sovereignty, interest, and security.
And the third point is that all roads between Rodrigo Duterte and China point to Fujian. Duterte’s mother Soledad was among the pioneer teachers of the Chinese school in Davao. A 2023 report from SMNI News said that “Soledad has family ties with Fujian Province.”
The statement was made relative to Duterte’s gracing the occasion inaugurating a school building named after his late mother – the Soledad Roa Duterte Memorial Building in Fujian Normal University (FNU) on July 19, 2023. Incidentally, even the exposed Chinese agent and former mayor of Bamban, Tarlac – Alice Guo (Guo Hua Ping) – is also from Fujian. The Triads trace their roots to Fujian.
But while the Triads have that image of being a criminal organization, they did not originate as such and also have a history of collusion with China’s governments since Sun Yat-sen.
The Triad secret societies date back to 1674, when a group of Buddhist monks at a monastery in Fujian became a rallying point against China’s oppressive Manchu rulers of the Qing Dynasty. The monks created a highly-effective form of self-defense, kung-fu, and they founded a set of secret societies that would endure for several generations. To escape persecution from the communists, the Triads relocated to Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Since then, they’ve expanded to countries with significant Chinese populations such as the United States, Canada, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Spain, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
Today, China’s communist leaders declared that some triads would be considered ‘patriotic’, signifying an alliance between the Communist Party of China and organized crime. By the late 1990s, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) jointly owned a string of nightclubs with the Sun Yee On (a Triad organization), while the Public Security Bureau ran several high-class brothels.
A Duterte son, Paolo, now a congressman, was asked by Senator Antonio Trillanes during a senate hearing in 2017 regarding a large shipment of illegal drugs, if he had a dragon-like tattoo on his back, a supposed sign of membership in a Chinese triad. Duterte admitted having a tattoo but refused to show it, citing his right to privacy.
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