The halls of the Senate last week reverberated with calls for the government to declare China’s Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian persona non grata and to send him packing back to Beijing.

Senator JV Ejercito told reporters of an instance when Huang, during a social event, crossed paths with Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Romeo Brawner Jr. and purportedly told him, “Don’t provoke us.”

We can’t be certain whether Senator JV meant it figuratively or literally when he said the Chinese envoy pointed his finger at Brawner while saying the AFP should not mess with China.

The term used by the lawmaker was “dinuro,” which to any Filipino worth his cojones would be unacceptable. However, it was apparent that Brawner took it in stride, being more adept at diplomacy than the supposed ambassador.

JV rued that Huang had always been “hostile”; thus, he burned instead of building bridges between his Filipino hosts and the Chinese people he represents.

While the soft-spoken Brawner has always been a paragon of civility, he is not one to be intimidated, as he even boarded a wooden-hulled boat on a resupply mission to the BRP Sierra Madre at Ayungin Shoal in the West Philippine Sea.

The BRP Sierra Madre was intentionally grounded at the shoal to serve as a permanent outpost on what is, according to a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling, part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

Based on the 2016 judgment, the WPS belongs to the Philippines, and thus, the Philippines has every right to permanently station the Sierra Madre at Ayungin and resupply its troops there.

But what do we know? In keeping with China’s belligerent stance for decades, even though the same arbitral ruling dashed as baseless its South China Sea claim, the China Coast Guard and its conscripted militia boats again attacked the Philippine resupply mission.

Probably unbeknown to the China Coast Guard, the rickety boat it bombarded with water had Brawner on board. Imagine if the boat had sunk; that would have set the Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines and the United States in play.

In a nutshell, the MDT states that a military attack on either the Philippines or the US is an attack on both. Thus, the two countries are mandated to defend each other.

Yet, in all this, is Huang really the problem? Okay, he’s obnoxious, as many who have encountered him have said. But from where this Contrarian sits, we’d just be shooting the messenger or the harbinger of bad news if he’s declared persona non grata.

The sooner we accept the fact that China is the problem and not just its functionaries like Huang, the better for us. A recent phone conversation between Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, should bear this out.

While Manalo tried some positive scripting in revealing the nature of his talk with Wang, the Chinese Foreign Minister’s take followed China’s hardline stance that the entire South China Sea is their territory and that the Philippines is trespassing in it.

Huang’s episode with Brawner was no different from Wang’s saber-rattling with Manalo, which was not only directed at the Philippines but also at the United States and the other nations that have allied themselves with Manila, like Australia.

Wang warned that if the Philippines misjudges or conspires with “ill-intentioned” external forces (clearly referencing the US and its freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea), China will defend its self-proclaimed rights and respond “resolutely.”

Wang left hanging what he meant by “resolutely,” but that’s a threat that can only be taken as its forces using more than water cannons, lasers, and acoustic devices to attack Philippine troops in the WPS.