“There is an election in a year or 2 so China will wait and see if the next President here can be persuaded to look the other way.”
A little presumptuous, don’t you think? The world will never see a more incompetent paper tiger as Commander in Chief as they do now. And Beijing will forgo this golden opportunity and roll the dice on the next American administration? Why wait for a Cruz administration to awake the sleeping giant?
No, if China is truly planning to throw their newfound regional weight around, it is within the next 18 months.
But the Philippine president is fairly competent and fairly honest. All China has to do is wait a year or 2 for the opposition to get back in here in the Philippines, and then bribe them. The left here got the Americans to close their bases, but now the question if the left will be bribed to keep the USA out... who do they hate more? The average Filipino hates the Chinese a lot more than Americans, because so many have relatives in the US.
And trade sanctions, even if they only included the US, Japan and Korea, would destroy the Chinese economy.
“... if China is truly planning to throw their newfound regional weight around, it is within the next 18 months.”
I agree.