Drawing the Line | Facts take flight

Produced by Li Mingzhi, Lu Dong and Lou Qingqing; Generated with the assistance of AI.

While a few Philippine politicians keep inflating the "China threat" narrative from the podium, ordinary Filipinos are telling a vastly different story—with their feet.

According to Philippine media reports, nearly 235,000 Filipinos visited China in the first nine months of this year—a staggering 51 percent surge that far outpaces the country's overall outbound travel growth of 7.16 percent.

Long queues outside visa centers and viral travel vlogs speak louder than political grandstanding. For years, anti-China rhetoric has been nothing more than political theater for a handful of opportunists. As flights take off and people-to-people exchanges boom, reality is decisively bursting the bubble of geopolitical hype.