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Author ：Benjamin Kang Lim is a Filipino journalist currently based in Beijing for Singapore's The Straits Times as a global affairs correspondent and previously with Reuters for 27 years serving as Taipei and eventually Beijing bureau chief.
The Manila ambassadorship in Beijing is without doubt a prestigious post, but in 2016 it was the most difficult job in the Philippine foreign service with no takers due to deteriorating bilateral ties over the disputed South China Sea.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was keen to reset bilateral relations after assuming office in June 2016, but needed to find a trusted and more than just competent envoy to do his bidding. While there were some qualified Philippine career diplomats and incumbent and retired politicians, no one put his or her hand up.
State-to-state relations then had plunged to their lowest ebb since normalisation in 1975 and were in deep freeze due to Duterte's immediate predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, filing in January 2013 an arbitration suit against China over the South China Sea, claimed in part by Manila as the West Philippine Sea.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, ruled in Manila's favor in July 2016, further riling Beijing which adamantly refused to accept the ruling.
Rising tensions aside, two former Philippine ambassadors to China were stressed out and forced to cut short their tenures due to illness. In 2012, Sonia Brady, then 71, suffered a stroke in Beijing and had to be flown home. And in 2016, Brady's successor, Erlinda Fadera-Basilio, then 72, was hospitalized in the Chinese capital for three weeks for pneumonia. The superstitious would have blamed it on bad feng shui in the Ambassador's Residence in Beijing.
Jose Santiago "Chito" Sta. Romana, a student activist-turned-journalist-turned-academic, got the job in December 2016 upon the recommendation of the respected West Point-educated former president Fidel Ramos, who was Duterte's special envoy. Ramos had led Track Two talks in Hong Kong in August that year with an old friend, Fu Ying, a former Chinese vice foreign minister, to iron out differences. Sta. Romana had participated as Ramos' China adviser.
Defying all odds, Sta. Romana worked with Duterte, the Department of Foreign Affairs and other Philippine government agencies as well as his Beijing Embassy staff to pull bilateral relations back from the brink.
Like many, I was shocked and saddened when I learned of Sta. Romana's death on April 18 in his quarantine hotel room in Huangshan, a popular scenic spot where he and Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr had met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on April 3. The official cause of death has not been announced, but it was believed to be cardiovascular related.
"No one wanted the job at the time," Sta. Romana recalled in a casual conversation when he and I - two senior citizens with ample time on our hands - were quarantined at his official residence in Beijing last September.
"It was a given that it was going to be a tough job," he told me in one of our many conversations in his spacious two-storey residence during our two-week quarantine - a Covid-19 precautionary requirement after re-entering the Chinese capital.
I had asked Sta. Romana, a close friend who I have known since 1994, if I could quarantine at one of the guest rooms at his residence after we returned to Beijing together from Xiamen where there was a new outbreak Covid-19. It would have been understandable if he turned down my request, but to my surprise and delight, he generously agreed. I would otherwise have to quarantine alone at a claustrophobic hotel room on the outskirts of Beijing.
In retrospect, the quarantine gave me a rare opportunity to get to know Sta. Romana even better. He told me about his plan to retire in September after the next administration takes over in June and possibly serve as an adviser on China affairs to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs.
He had been looking forward to his retirement, return home and help care for his bedridden wife Nancy, who suffered a stroke in December 2015. Sta. Romana had been in a quandary whether to accept the ambassadorial appointment, but went ahead in the end knowing that his wife would be in good hands with their youngest son Christopher looking after her with caretakers round-the-clock.
When my wife and I visited Sta. Romana's Bonifacio Global City home in Metro Manila in November 2018, we witnessed a touching moment: he gently stroked his wife's hair and whispered into her ear that we had come to see her even though she stared into space and did not appear to recognize us.
Sta. Romana was a faithful husband, kept his wedding vows - in sickness or in health - and cared for his wife, a Chinese-Filipino who is five years his junior. They met in Beijing and married on July 25, 1981. He was also a doting father.
Sta. Romana's death was truly tragic not just for his family and friends, but also for Manila as well as Beijing. The Philippine national flag has been flying at half mast at the Embassy since April 19.
At age 74, Sta. Romana was not in the best of health. He had cataract surgery on his right eye at a Beijing hospital catering mainly to foreigners on Feb 9. His Shanghai-based eldest son Norman flew to Beijing to take care of him and celebrate the week-long Lunar New Year holidays together.
Sta. Romana's doctor advised him against travelling by plane after the surgery, but he did not hesitate when duty called. He flew to Manila on Feb 25 for consultations and delayed his March 24 departure for Beijing at the last minute to prepare for and join the meeting between Locsin and Wang.
After Sta. Romana arrived in Anhui on April 2, we kept in touch via the Chinese instant messaging app WeChat and had planned to meet up for lunch at my humble abode in Beijing after his three-week quarantine ended on April 25.
The last time I met Sta. Romana was in Beijing on Jan 15 when a small group of friends celebrated his birthday at a Japanese restaurant near the Embassy. It had been an annual ritual, and he will be sorely missed in the years to come.
（APD）
