This is making me miss more the past administration and of course, former president Duterte. When he's still on the seat, he's being told that he's a lapdog of China but he sure knows what he's doing and not startling any fight that will make our country in a really terrible situation.
Looked to me as though Duterte was 'for real' and actually did care about the country and it's people to a reasonable degree. There is little doubt that the dis-like for him among the globalist types who own the media was 'for real'. I suspect that Duterte had some understanding of 'their game' and wasn't interested in much of it for his country. Alas, by the time I got here they guys seemed to have been pretty beat down. I suspect they did Marawi and asked him if he wanted more. He declined and didn't cause any more real problems. It's possible that he influenced uptake of the less dangerous non-genetic Chinese de-population shots which, if true, is better than nothing but his performance through the scamdemic was generally bleak. Seems to me that he left office pretty much a beaten man.
I remember early on Duterte saying that the U.S. wanted Filipinos to fight China. Duterte said something to the effect of "
they have nuclear ballistic missiles and I have nothing. That's insane!" I don't particularly doubt his story, and I don't doubt that the basic idea of 'fighting China to the last Filipino' remains desirable to the U.S. in SE Asia as it is with Ukroids in Eastern Europe. They have said for 50 years that there are to many Filipinos in The Philippines and that it's a high priority national security task to rectify the problem. See: NSSM 200. And see the 'tetanus shot' shenanigans of a couple decades ago. Not to mention the myriad of foreign NGO's active in 'family planning' issues.
Alliance with the US and giving them free base camps was what Duterte has pointed out that they can't go here and get those things for free and the other one (China) might think that there's something that's happening. It's true that when a war starts, many of the citizens that are able will just flee from this country but the sad reality is, too many that are in poverty that even bares something to eat. In the current administration with Marcos, it's obvious that he's more with the US and giving them all of the benefits and didn't pursue what Duterte has started and they seem to put into waste in terms of being neutral and friends to anyone. Although both have said that they can be friends with anyone and enemy with none, Duterte has proved that but after almost 1 year of Marcos' leadership, I don't think so.
Letting the U.S. use The Philippines for stockpiling weapons is probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard. The U.S. is in a desperate race against their collapsing monetary system to get a war going with China. As soon as that happens, any American garrisons or stockpiles are legitimate targets. Unlike in Europe where there is some threat of NATO Article 5, SEATO never got off the ground. I'd be surprised if any other SE Asian countries would lift much more than a finger to help The Philippines as I would expect that they don't really welcome the U.S. as a house-guest in the area and they obviously can easily predict the problems that the invitation is going to bring to the area.
If anything I would expect that the whole outcome of such a conflict would be pre-planned, and this would be some pre-arrange trade of The Philippines to the Chinese for something else Maybe Japan or Korea or some such. I mean it is unlikely that the Chinese would come in physically as an occupying force absent a military excuse to do so. Everyone makes money, and, as you say, the connected people can easily bail to one of their overseas place and wait things out.
I predict that there will be no significant war on Taiwanese soil. There are to many personal, family, and business relationships between the Chinese on Formosa and Mainland. They'd all prefer to do the bulk of the fighting on the soil of a third-party, and The Philippines is a natural for that just as was Ukraine.
As an aside I just heard that it's getting difficult for Filipinos to get past immigration on their way out. Some crackdown under the excuse of 'human trafficking' or something like that. That could be another early indication of storm-clouds on the horizon.