China will completely control the Philippines through debt trapping. I didn’t realize the situation had gotten so bad so fast. A few years ago the Philippines had a president named Gloria Arroyo. Her husband, the First Gentleman, was nicknamed “Mr Twenty Percent”, the cost of a favor. Marcos may be gone but corruption didn’t leave with him.
So, Arroyo’s husband was to China as
Hunter Biden was to Ukraine?
The Philippines are a young country and will experience a lot of growing pains over time; they share many of the same characteristics of Latin American countries in terms of corruption and instability - possibly a legacy of Spanish rule (they were a colony of Spain much more recently than most Latin American countries). Spain lost Cuba and Puerto Rico and Cuba at the same time, and they have the same problems (even with Cuba’s communist rule).
Geographically it would seem very difficult to administer.