The government of the Philippines on Thursday lodged a formal diplomatic protest with China over an AI-generated video published by Chinese state media depicting Filipinos as monkeys.
The Philippine government condemned the Chinese-made video as racist, unacceptable, and dehumanizing over its portrayal of Philippine nationals, demanding its immediate takedown.
Last week, the Chinese state propaganda newspaper China Daily published an AI-generated video depicting a monkey wearing Filipino national dress. In the video, the monkey is guided by an “American” and “Japanese” hand to sing an English karaoke song related to South China Sea waters that the Chinese communist regime falsely claims belongs to China.
After being called “stupid,” the monkey grabs a sheet of paper that reads “South China Sea arbitration award” before being thrown into the sea and blasted by a water cannon. A whale then derides the sheet of paper as “litter.”
At press time, the video is still visible on China Daily‘s Facebook page.
On Thursday, the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) elevated a strong protest over the video. According to the state-run Philippine News Agency (PNA), the DFA said disagreement over legal and political issues “does not justify resorting to disturbing imagery, which has no place in the civil public discourse of a responsible state.”
“As a Chinese state-run media outlet, China Daily’s conduct goes beyond legitimate political debate and employs blatantly demeaning, dehumanizing, and racist depictions of Filipinos,” the DFA reportedly said in a statement.
“The Philippines has consistently rejected false narratives and distortions regarding the Arbitral Award and the Philippines lawful positions in the South China Sea. But we draw a firm line at the depiction of Filipinos as monkeys in the 10 July 2026 video, which is deeply offensive, distressing, and unacceptable,” the text continued.
The DFA demanded the immediate takedown of the video and urged China to “uphold dignity, respect, and truth in public discourse.”
For years, the Chinese communist regime has falsely claimed that most of the South China Sea belongs to China — including waters that rightfully belong to the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei, as well as as waters off the coast of Indonesia. The Chinese regime bases its false claims on the “nine-dash line” a map that falsely claims ownership of the disputed territories.
China Daily published the video accused of depicting Filipinos as monkeys on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the July 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling on the territorial dispute.
At the time, the court ruled in favor of the Philippines and stated that China had no legal right to be present in the disputed areas. However, over the past ten years, China has repeatedly disrespected the court’s firm ruling and harassed, threatened, and attacked vessels passing through their respective nation’s waters, in addition to other actions.
The Philippines’ Department of National Defence (DND) Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. condemned China Daily‘s video as “contemptible propaganda.” Per PNA, Secretary Teodoro stressed that the video reveals the “weakness of a government” that resorts to racism and threats.
“The recent spate of schizophrenic behavior of the Chinese Communist Party is too clear to disregard or to ignore,” Teodoro reportedly said. “This latest act of dehumanization further reveals them as neither a secure and confident actor nor a trustworthy neighbor.”
PNA further reported on Friday morning that Philippine lawmakers also joined in condemning the AI-generated video as racist. In a joint parliamentary statement, Philippine legislators denounced the video as “a vile, racist attack that exposes the moral bankruptcy and intellectual desperation of Beijing’s propaganda apparatus.”
“This is the conduct of a bully that has run out of legal arguments and has resorted to bigotry,” the lawmakers reportedly said in the joint statement.
According to the BBC, the AI-generated monkey video is one of several clips and cartoons that China Daily published on Facebook over the past weeks mocking the Philippines over the South China Sea dispute.
In another Facebook post, China Daily published a cartoon photo of a clown wearing the colors of the Phillipine’s flag. The clown is seen painting a bamboo-eating panda but making the bear resemble a tiger. The Chinese newspaper titled the photo as, “The ‘art’ of twisting facts.”
Asked by Bloomberg for comment on the situation during a Friday press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian claimed that the Chinese government had no involvement in China Daily‘s video and said he had “no comment on that.”
“Let me stress that China’s position on the issue of ‘South China Sea arbitration’ is clear and consistent. The ‘arbitration’ is a political farce masqueraded as a legal process,” Lin said. “The so-called ‘award’ is illegal, null and void, and has no binding force.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.