You have to ask yourself - what exactly is this “Freedom of Navigation” that people talk about?
Like in almost every “conflict” we’ve been in during modern times - what on earth are white folks’ naval vessels doing in Asian waters?
Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea are all vassal territories of America - little discussion needed there if one’s familiar with their history.
The Philippines is an interesting outlier because they’re worse than that - they’re more closely comparable to a “Banana Republic.” They used to have pretty good relations with China over the disputed islands - there used to be an unwritten agreement between the Philippines (previous administrations) and China for joint development and “kicking the can down the road” as far as sovereignty was concerned (meaning, maybe we’ll be too prosperous from mutual trade to seriously care about these islands in the future). It’s difficult for them to substantiate any claims over the territory as they didn’t exist as a country and thus lacked any formalized written language documenting such until a few hundreds of years ago - whereas the Chinese predate them by thousands of years.
The Philippines’ largest trading partner is China. They are a country which is largely dependent on Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, Realme, and OnePlus phones for mobile connectivity and can barely afford Samsungs or iPhones. It was once the top exporter of Bananas, Mangoes, and Durians to SEAsia but lost out due to their inability to maintain a proper cold chain, much less appropriate quality control. Their higher - tier (manufacturing) exports are entirely foreign subsidiaries, and their private sector is trying to emulate the American “service - based” economy instead.
The Filipinos are under the impression that they’re in the middle of a great, patriotic struggle of sovereignty (the South China Sea is now the “West Philippine Sea,” from their rhetoric) when in fact they’re just another little Ukraine - the big difference is, they’re prostating themselves practically for free. Indonesia has burned, blown up, or outright sunk 92 Filipino fishing vessels for illegal fishing in disputed waters since 2014 - but we don’t hear the Filipinos contesting any EEZ rules over such. Guess why.
Among all of the ASEAN countries, that territory just fails to present itself as a serious argument.
