Previous investigations revealed that Guo owned the property that Hongsheng Gaming Technology – later renamed to Zun Yuan – was leasing and previously secured a no-objection letter from the municipal council in 2021, part of the requirements needed for the firm to establish operations.
Authorities who raided the compound in the Bamban municipality in the northern Philippine province of Tarlac in 2023 uncovered evidence of scams and human trafficking.
Aletheia Valenciano, assistant professor at the University of the Philippines’ political science department, said Guo’s campaign and eventual 2022 election win to become mayor “did not operate in a vacuum”.
Yet a fingerprint test revealed her fingerprints matched those of Guo Hua Ping, who entered the Philippines from China as a young teen with her family in 2003 on a special investor resident visa.
The circumstances around Guo’s ability to run and win in the mayoral election despite her dubious records have exposed weaknesses in the country’s processes of assessing potential public officeholders, observers say.
“There are facilitating conditions that made it possible both at the local and national levels. This should be studied thoroughly to track and prevent similar cases,” Valenciano said.
Sherwin Ona, a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research in Taiwan, told This Week in Asia that individuals like Guo were “taking advantage of the fact that our systems are siloed and our public agencies do not usually share data”.
Valenciano agreed, adding that Philippine agencies overseeing the entry of foreigners as well as the police force needed better coordination and exchange of information.
02:49
China, Philippines differ over deal to stop clashes at fiercely disputed shoal
China, Philippines differ over deal to stop clashes at fiercely disputed shoal
Defence analyst Vincent Kyle Parada, a researcher at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told This Week in Asia said Guo’s case highlighted a “very public display of the decay in institutions” and that it was not possible to fault a single office or agency.
“It’s more difficult to admit that Alice Guo, whoever she is, was the product of an entire system failure.”
Signs of malign influence?
Analysts have also flagged the possibility of malign influence by external actors amid recent reports of a surge in falsified identity documents issued to foreigners.
They warn that the issue goes beyond Guo – officials revealed at a Senate hearing on August 5 that more than 1,500 fake birth certificates were issued to foreigners from 2016 to 2023 in the town of Santa Cruz in Davao del Sur province. The midwife who signed the documents was found to be non-existent.
Authorities have also begun investing allegations of a Manila-based foreign journalist, previously a Washington DC correspondent for the Shanghai-based Wenhui Daily newspaper, working as a Chinese agent.
Ona said he believed Guo’s case was not isolated and was “part of an elaborate malign influence effort to undermine of institutions and corrupt our public officials”.
“Combined with alleged Pogo (offshore gaming operations) connections and the reported existence of a spy network, this playbook is a common characteristic of a united front and espionage operations,” Ona added.
Parada said parts of the northern Philippines had always enjoyed a healthy influx of Chinese migrants and Guo’s case pointed to “an obvious lapse in either due diligence, security, or moral integrity across the various agencies of government involved in the immigration process”.
“The real issue is that government had potentially exposed the country to foreign surveillance and interference through a lack of oversight, and at a time in which countries throughout the world face new and emerging security challenges thanks to the information boom,” he said.
Observers said that the decision to remove Alice Guo from office was an important first step but was symptomatic of wider problems in the national systems.
“There are still links to Chinese criminal syndicates to consider, money laundering, violations of election law. The government has to go down every line of inquiry possible to understand how it could’ve happened and how to prevent it from happening moving forward,” Parada said.
Valenciano said that stripping Guo of her position signalled to Filipinos and the world that Manila was serious about dealing with the issue.
Ona believed that a digital transformation of the Philippines’ civil registry and immigration systems was crucial in curbing potential malign operations.
“The full implementation of the national ID law is another weapon in our legal arsenal because this law calls for integration of government processes and systems,” he said.