Or do we just turn to America and repeat history, shackling ourselves economically to our former colonizer ‘The predominant view in China, harbored by the civilian side of the foreign policy community, including the vast majority of scholars, is to either maintain the status quo or push harder for cooperation in the South China Sea. I am not for military action against Beijing in the West Philippine Sea. I am in the minority based on a survey showing that 73 percent of Filipinos support it.
How has it come to this? “The predominant view in China, harbored by the civilian side of the foreign policy community, including the vast majority of scholars, is to either maintain the status quo or push harder for cooperation in the South China Sea,” wrote Mingjiang Li in her article “Reconciling Assertiveness and Cooperation? China’s Changing Approach to the South China Sea Dispute.” China’s appetite for energy resources in the South China Sea (SCS), according to Li, will see Beijing becoming “more assertive to protect its energy resources, given its strategic concerns in East Asia,” but as the political pundit puts it, “the leadership’s obsession with the priority of domestic economic development, China will probably attempt to flex its muscle in a limited fashion and will see to avoid any dramatic escalation of the dispute.” Well, I suppose that was before the Philippine government decided to increase US military presence in the archipelago.
We have now seen B.
