The Philippines has been emboldened with the recent public and maybe even private assurances from their benefactor (U.S.) and treaty ally along with the recently announced 5 U.S. military bases. The possible addition of more military installations to challenge, provoke, and goad China to react in such a lopsided violent manner in order to garner INTERNATIONAL OUTCRY AND ULTIMATELY, SUPPORT for the Philippines which would validate the U.S. invented narrative of CHINA'S BULLYING AND EXPANSIONIST AMBITIONS IN Its periphery, then the world.
The 2012 Scarborough Shoal example of China’s resolve should have already taught you a valuable lesson as well as the strategic calculus that animates the leaders in Beijing. The more inference that Beijing is just being pushed around by a two bit country is just utter bullocks and hubristic nonsense coming from you.
What would you have the country do? Commit a violent confrontation with all the INTERNATIONAL PROPAGANDA OUTLETS (on their side always ever on the ready to twist the most innocuous and innocent actions of China as evil, genocidal etc.) that would possibly place China in a tight spot thereby severely damaging its own credibility in the eyes of the global south in terms of how China handles disputes. I am not sure if you know or care to know that China had just recently published a 25 page white paper espousing the message of a world with shared future. To quote some of the passages of the paper:
"It is increasingly obvious that the obsession with superior strength, and the zero-sum mentality are in conflict with the needs of our times, the white paper said, pointing out that the new era calls for new ideas.
To build a global community of shared future is to pursue openness, inclusiveness, mutual benefit, equity and justice, the white paper said. The goal is not to replace one system or civilization with another. Instead, it is about countries with different social systems, ideologies, histories, shared rights, and shared responsibilities in global affairs."
The White paper may sound high minded b.s. to many hyper-nationalists like you, but not to many reasonable people in China and around the world, including the Philippines.
The SCS situation with the Philippines is a test of will and patience not to mention of China’s ability to resolve disputes that seeks to avoid the typical recipes that's been tried and tested many times over by the west. If China fails on this regard, by aping it's strategic enemy, the U.S. in both style and substance, China may as well drop its pretenses of becoming a different super power since she'll be the same as the old master with different strokes.
