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Cutting through the tropical waters of the South China Sea, the front line of global rivalry between China and the United States leaves no country more exposed than the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally.
Open war it is not, but it is far from complete peace either. While the neighboring self-ruling island of Taiwan lives with the looming threat of a Chinese takeover, the Philippines sees a daily battle to stop chunks of maritime territory being taken in the name of Beijing’s sweeping claims.
“On the probability scale, we view that the attempts against us in the West Philippine Sea are more severe than the prospects of any Taiwanese conflict,” Philippines Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro told Newsweek at Manila’s main military camp.
“We see that there is an attempt to occupy areas within our exclusive economic zone, and we have to resist that,” said Teodoro, who has been banned from China for hawkish remarks.
China challenges the Philippines’ own claims within the “Nine-Dash Line”—a U-shaped boundary in the South China Sea that Beijing has decreed is its territory—rejecting an international arbitration court ruling from a decade ago that went in favor of the Philippines.
“China has consistently maintained that differences should be managed through dialogue and consultation, not through sensationalism or manufactured narratives,” the Chinese Embassy in Manila said in a recent social media post.
China’s embassy did not respond to Newsweek’s requests for comment.
‘Resistance and Resolve’
The Philippines and Taiwan, along with Japan, form parts of the “First Island Chain” that America sees as its strategic bulwark against China in the Pacific.
The Philippines is no stranger to being fought over. The former Spanish colony was seized by the U.S. at the end of the 19th century in the empire’s final death throes. It then saw some of the heaviest fighting in the Pacific in World War Two between Japan and the U.S. After independence in 1946, it kept its strong U.S. ties as a rear base during Cold War conflicts in Asia.
Made up of around 7,600 islands, the country is now home to nearly 120 million people—a third as many as the United States. It is a crucial business back-office hub and source of skilled migrant workers. A quarter of the world’s overseas nurses are from the Philippines and up to a third of the maritime workforce.
It now seeks to build its global security partnerships beyond the U.S., with Japan, Canada, Australia and Western European countries. “For them, naturally, it’s about keeping the South China Sea as a global common, which is directly challenging the Nine-Dash Line of China,” Teodoro said. “I wouldn’t put it at confrontation, I would put it at resistance and resolve; China is the one confronting us.”
On the anniversary of the July 2016 South China Sea arbitration ruling, a group of Chinese academics advanced a new territorial claim, suggesting the Philippines’ northernmost Batanes islands were a geographical extension of Taiwan and therefore part of China.
Teodoro dismissed it as ridiculous and a local newspaper quipped that using that logic, the Philippines could lay claim to China itself as an extension of its territory.
But it was nonetheless interpreted as another warning message. Confrontations between Philippine vessels and Chinese ships using water jets or ramming have become commonplace. The recent focus is Scarborough Shoal, around 140 miles from the Philippines’ largest island and 540 miles from mainland China. China took de facto control in 2012, but has not yet built the kind of concrete outpost it has established elsewhere in the South China Sea. In June, it removed a temporary floating research platform after diplomatic pressure from Manila.
“We don’t want our fisherfolks, we don’t want the government, we don’t want the Filipino people to accept the new reality as a new reality,” Rear Admiral Roy Trinidad, Philippines navy spokesman for the West Philippine Sea, told Newsweek.
Although the Philippines has its mutual defense treaty with the U.S., it has not drawn on that in defending its waters. Academic Richard Heydarian said the Philippines wanted to demonstrate its own capabilities at home, to fellow Southeast Asian nations and to China.
“So far the Philippines has been relatively successful in a sense that it has not lost any major land feature to China,” he told Newsweek. “As far as China’s actions are concerned, they’re more grazing, although increasingly a more aggressive grazing strategy that are always just short of the threshold of direct military confrontation.”
The U.S. presence in the Philippines has been strengthened under President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., elected in 2022 and the son of Cold War dictator Ferdinand Marcos—dubbed “America’s Boy” by one biographer. U.S. military base access has increased, Typhon Mid-Range Capability, or MRC, missile systems have been deployed and the two nations’ joint annual Balikatan military exercise has grown.
The Philippines has also been brought into America’s Pax Silica initiative to counter China on the technology front, with a plan for an artificial intelligence industrial hub north of Manila. Although some leftist groups have protested the project, it is widely expected to move forward.
An Opening For China
But the president can only serve one six-year term, and maneuvering is intensifying ahead of the nation’s 2028 presidential election—with a possible opening for Beijing. China is inescapable in the Philippines. The mainland and Hong Kong accounted for nearly a third of total exports and imports in 2024—making it easily the biggest trade partner. Chinese firms are invested in the national grid and form the backbone of the telecoms network.
Teodoro accused China of trying to undermine the Philippines through “wolf warrior” diplomacy, disinformation, social media trolls, crime syndicates, purchases of land through dummy buyers and infiltration through the establishment of sister cities—among other things.
One possibility in the 2028 election is a victory for Vice President Sara Duterte. Her populist father Rodrigo Duterte took a distinctly pro-Beijing line in office from 2016 to 2022. He now faces charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court after being shipped to The Hague under Marcos following a falling out between the political dynasties.
“The Philippines is such an unstable democracy,” said Carlos Conde, editor of the Rights Report website. “If Sara wins, the Chinese could put their foot back in. That’s not to say the U.S. is going to be kicked out, obviously not, but there’s going to be a lot more effort to try to maintain a stronghold in the Philippines.”
Sara Duterte faces her own legal troubles through Senate impeachment hearings. She stands accused of threatening President Marcos in a Zoom call, of misusing public funds, accumulating wealth from unexplained sources, bribery and corruption. She denies any wrongdoing and says the impeachment is politically motivated.
With the Senate divided between Marcos and Sara Duterte supporters, there is no guarantee the impeachment verdict will go against her or stop a presidential run in 2028. The trial, which began on July 6, is expected to run for weeks and possibly months. Both Sara Duterte and her father have a massive following for their promises and for his deadly war on drugs.
Bigger Issues
Yet in a recent survey, nearly 70 percent of Filipinos said the government should be even more forceful to counter China in the South China Sea with naval patrols and an expanded troop presence.
Either way, relations with the U.S. and China are not top issues for voters in the Philippines. The fact that the World Bank recently elevated the country to the status of an upper-middle-income country belies the poverty in which many live. For them, the cost of living will matter more than geopolitics. “There’s a phrase in Tagalog called ‘malayo sa bituka,’ which means ‘it’s too far from my stomach,’” said Conde.
And even if a more pro-China administration were to win, there is a question mark over how far it would shift the dial diplomatically. “It [Beijing] had its best shot during the Duterte administration to really create deep roots and make major inroads, but it really missed the opportunity,” said Heydarian. “China made no significant investments in the Philippines.” Instead, Chinese businesses were prominent in online gambling and scam operations, another source of friction even though such activities were condemned by Beijing.
The Philippines’ strongly pro-American armed forces are also determined that there will be no weakening of the relationship with Washington. While some European and Middle East countries might be questioning their alliances with the U.S. under President Donald Trump, Filipino authorities voice confidence in an “ironclad” security alliance based on both history and a reading of U.S. security priorities for dominating the Pacific Ocean.
“After the United States, you have Hawaii, you have Guam, nothing else,” Teodoro said. “Even with the shift of policy, we saw the largest multilateral exercise this year, we have a lot of bilateral activities. There’s a lot of exchanges and a lot of defense cooperation in a converged manner going on.”
The 2028 election may shape the tone of Philippine foreign policy, but not necessarily its direction. China is an economic fact of life, while the U.S. remains a key security partner. Whoever wins in Manila, balancing those two realities will remain a central challenge.
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