no, they're right - china could easily win a confrontation with the philippines.

what they leave out is: it would never be a confrontation with JUST the philippines. Same with taiwan - they could theoretically overwhelm them in a few weeks.

but none of this happens in a vacuum.

the countries of the south china sea need to be ready to help one another and unify their resistance to china, otherwise they're going to fall one by one.

make china understand: there's no easy pickings if they decided to fight, it's gonna be with aus, japan, the US, south korea, thailand, vietnam, malaysia, indonesia, new zealand cambodia singapore laos png etc. not just one country.

and for fuck's sake, Xi, wake up: remember vladivostok, and what the russians TOOK from your people. look at all that empty fuckin space - all those fuckin resources - just sitting around, undeveloped and wasted by russia. have some fuckin pride. go north instead of fighting a dozen countries that want to defend themselves. big chunks of western russia still have enormous ethnic chinese populations.