Pro and Anti-China Lines Harden In The Phillipines

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

Asia Times
Richard Javad Heydarian Manila, August 7, 2018 3:40 PM (UTC+8)

[excerpt]

http://www.atimes.com/article/pro-and-anti-china-lines-harden-in-the-philippines/

China’s reclamation and militarization activities across the South China Sea is again sharply dividing the Philippines’ political establishment, which is struggling to adopt an agreed and optimal response to protect sovereign and strategic interests.

The spirited and increasingly vicious exchanges among senior figures echo a similar episode during the 2012 Scarborough Shoal crisis, when various legislators and executive officials publicly accused each other of treason and betrayal of the national interest.

The months-long naval stand-off saw China take administrative control of the shoal, situated about 200 kilometers from the Philippines’ Subic port and within the nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and hence immutably shift the contested maritime region’s strategic dynamics.

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

We had to go kick the Japanese out of there in the 1940s.

So now will our obsession with cheap imported Chinese stuff result in our having to go kick China out of there next?

Cheaper to break them now. We can't afford the blow up of having to go head to head with China over the Phillipines and we certainly can't afford to just let China have them.