This article examines the nature of the Philippines' response with respect to China and the United Sates (the US) in the period of post arbitration, roughly beginning from July 12, 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration (the PCA) in the Hague, issued a ruling in the case of the disputed Spratly Islands until present. The significance of the research comes from the strategy used by secondary states of international politics in dealing their relations with great powers. The Philippines seems to have been stuck between the United States and China, in particular, in the wake of post-arbitration. In the literature, majority of the study indicates that the Philippines is shifting its policy from balancing with the United States to accommodation with China. However, current alliance between the United States and the Philippines and China's ongoing activities in the South China Sea prevent the Philippines of employing exclusively accommodation with China. The article finds that although Manila and Beijing are strengthening their ties in many domains, the United States and the Philippines are expected to remain allies in the near future. Consequently, we consider that the Philippines' policy of accommodation with China is just a complementary policy rather than an alternative approach.

No abstract

This article aims to examine power relations between China and West in the 19th century, in particular, from the first Opium War (1839-1842) to Self-strengthening Movement (1864-1884) since when Europeans, for the first time, came to China with new technologies, armaments, and ideas, and told them what is good for Chinese, Chinese were bewildered because they did not know how to respond. China had lived under its sense of superiority as mandate of heaven with its neighbours for a long centuries. They had not seen people like westerners before. They were complacent with regards to foreign world, and did not keep up with contemporary world conditions. Thus, when they encountered superior power of westerners throughout the 19th century, they failed to response successfully, and started to lose everything they believed and had for centuries. In Chinese respond to West, two strategies were put forth, which one ise a sort of external balancing, but not via military alliance with another country, but through the concept of most favoured nation clause by inviting other western countries to China in order to use "one barbarian country to another barbarian country". The other strategy China utilized is a kind of internal balancing by menas of self-strengthening movement.