Philippine Diplomatic Protest Ignites Over Dehumanizing Chinese AI Video

Manila filed a protest after a Chinese state media AI generated video depicted Filipinos as monkeys, escalating tense South China Sea disputes.

Mary Man

Published: 7/17/2026, 11:45:10 PM EDT

Philippine Diplomatic Protest Ignites Over Dehumanizing Chinese AI Video — A robot hand reaches out to the letters AI (Artificial Intelligence) in an image taken at an undisclosed location on June 23, 2023. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

On Friday, the Philippine side lodged a diplomatic protest regarding a video posted by Chinese state media, expressing "strong opposition" to the "offensive content" therein.

On July 10, China Daily posted an AI-generated video on social media. In the video, a monkey dressed in traditional Philippine attire, appearing ragged, is being manipulated by arms symbolizing the United States and Japan.

The monkey is pushed onto a wobbly karaoke stage on a boat to sing, while suffering verbal insults, before finally being thrown into the sea and blasted with high-pressure water cannons by a coast guard vessel.

In the video, the "South China Sea Arbitration Award" held in the monkey's hand is referred to as "litter."

The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs' statement said that Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Leo Herrera-Lim demanded that the materials be taken down, stressing that “such content is inconsistent with the mutual respect expected between states and does no favors to the sound and stable management of bilateral relations.”

The department said it “has since issued a formal diplomatic protest condemning the videos and cartoons," believing that “China Daily went beyond legitimate political debate by resorting to demeaning, dehumanizing, and racist depictions of Filipinos.”

The Philippine Embassy in China also sent a letter to the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, demanding the "immediate removal of this offensive content."

Leo Herrera-Lim raised the matter directly with Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan in a face-to-face meeting one day before the statement and demanded that the materials be taken down.

The video remains on China Daily's Facebook page as of Friday.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Friday that the video "is not an official act, and I will not comment on it."

However, state-run China Daily, founded in 1981, is a national-level English-language daily newspaper hosted by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and is managed on behalf of the State Council Information Office.

Lin added that the "South China Sea Arbitration case" is a political farce cloaked in a legal guise, and the so-called "ruling" is "illegal, invalid, and has no binding force."

South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal Ruling

The controversy arrives at a particularly charged moment for both nations, as the timing of the video's release directly coincides with the 10th anniversary of the historic South China Sea arbitration ruling.

In 2013, the Philippines initiated arbitration at the tribunal located in The Hague in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), challenging China's claims over most of the South China Sea.

According to the maritime boundaries demarcated by the CCP, it claims historic rights over approximately 90 percent of the South China Sea and its islands and reefs, overlapping with the maritime rights claims of countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia.

In 2016, the arbitral tribunal ruled that China's claim has no legal basis under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and therefore it cannot claim exclusive rights to the relevant waters based on it.

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the ruling, fourteen countries issued a joint statement supporting the arbitration results.

They are the United States, Australia, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, the Republic of the Philippines, Romania, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom.

The statement said the countries reaffirm that maritime disputes must be resolved peacefully and in accordance with UNCLOS.

“We reaffirm that the Award rendered ten years ago by the Arbitral Tribunal is a significant milestone and is final, legally binding, and definitive between China and the Philippines with respect to the maritime entitlements and claims addressed by the Arbitral Tribunal,” it reads.