The trap inside a tongue-twister

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

Two men shook hands inside the Great Hall of the People last Thursday, and somewhere between the toasts and a walled tour of Zhongnanhai, the United States may have just agreed to a phrase it will spend the next three years trying to walk back.

The phrase is constructive strategic stability. Xi Jinping unveiled it. Donald Trump did not push back. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asked about it on NBC, said the Trump administration agreed with the concept. The White House readout did not mention it at all. That gap — between what Beijing announced and what Washington wrote down — is where the trouble starts.

Manila is in the ASEAN chair this year — which means whatever framework just got handed to Washington also gets handed, eventually, to us.

Let me start with what the phrase actually means, because it is doing a lot of work for a slogan no one will quote at a barbecue. In Beijing’s framing, the two superpowers compete, but within limits. Differences are “manageable.” Peace is “expectable.” Sounds reasonable and so adult. The catch is who decides what counts as manageable. Xi has been very clear that Taiwan is the most important issue in the relationship — he reportedly warned Trump that mishandling it would invite “clashes and even conflicts.” Trump, flying back on Air Force One, said he “made no commitment” on a pending USD 14 billion arms package to Taipei. He will, in his words, “make a determination.”

Stability, my foot. That’s leverage, mid-squeeze.

Bill Bishop, who writes the Sinocism newsletter and has probably read more Chinese readouts than is healthy for any one person, put it plainly: any future US action China dislikes — tighter export controls, more Taiwan arms, pushback on industrial overcapacity — can now be cast as a violation of a framework Trump personally endorsed. Evan Medeiros, who ran Asia policy on Obama’s National Security Council, called these phrases “geopolitical quicksand.” The more you struggle, the deeper you go. That isn’t analyst hyperbole. China tried this in 2013 with “a new model of great power relations.” Obama refused to bite. Trump, this week, did not.

Now bring it home.

Manila chairs ASEAN this year. More than photo-ops and hopeful statements, it coincides with the tenth anniversary of the 2016 arbitral ruling in our favor — the one Beijing has spent a decade pretending does not exist. Foreign Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro has said we want to wrap up the long-stalled Code of Conduct for the South China Sea before the year ends. We host the summit just as we sit on the front line of the dispute. And the country whose Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) we have leaned on for seven decades just nodded at a Chinese-authored framework whose first red line is an island whose northernmost shore you can see from Itbayat on a clear morning.

Ginahangkat ang aton diplomasya — and not in the way crises usually announce themselves, with helicopters and front pages.

A few things are worth saying plainly.

First, this Trump administration is not a stable anchor. The Council on Foreign Relations’ Zongyuan Zoe Liu wrote ahead of the summit that Xi is playing for time, expecting US competition to slacken after the 2026 midterms or once Trump leaves office. That is also how Beijing is reading us. Manila’s bet on Washington since 2023 — more Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites, the so-called Squad arrangement with Japan and Australia, billions in modernization pledges — was built on the assumption that the alliance would hold its shape. The Beijing summit suggests it may bend in places we did not expect.

Second, Filipinos still want the Americans here. A Pulse Asia survey conducted from February 27 to March 2, 2026 found 59 percent of respondents wanted Trump, of all leaders, to visit during this year’s ASEAN summit. Xi got three percent. That isn’t a contradiction so much as a portrait of where the public is — clear-eyed about who has been pushing water cannons at our Coast Guard, and equally clear that an American presence, flawed and transactional as it is, remains the deterrent we have.

Third, the hedging Malacañang has been doing quietly for two years now looks less like opportunism and more like prudence. The reciprocal access agreement with Japan. The Status of Visiting Forces Agreement (SOVFA) with Canada. The defense cooperation deal with Germany. The South Korean submarine talks with Hanwha Ocean. Even the preliminary roadmap with Beijing on managing South China Sea incidents. Each of these looked, at the time, like a hedge against Chinese pressure. After this week, they also look like hedges against American drift.

What should Manila actually do?

Push the Code of Conduct, but do not pretend it is a substitute for the 2016 award. Beijing will try to use COC drafting to relativize our legal win. We should refuse, the way diplomats refuse — with a smile and a paragraph. Keep transparency as policy: the Coast Guard’s strategy of publicizing every incursion has cost China something it never priced in, which is regional sympathy. Do not abandon that.

Diversify, seriously. Not as a slogan but as a procurement plan. If a Trump administration can be flattered into endorsing Chinese phrasing on a Thursday, it can be flattered into other things on a Tuesday. Japanese, South Korean, Australian, European, and Indian defense ties are no longer alternatives to the US alliance — they are part of what a serious Philippine defense posture has to look like in 2026.

And then there is the part nobody likes to hear. Our economy still sits inside China’s gravitational well. China remains a top trading partner. A regional war over Taiwan — a war Xi reportedly told Trump he does not want triggered by independence moves — would do to our remittance economy, our shipping lanes, and our overseas Filipino workers something no Mutual Defense Treaty can paper over. Strategic stability between the two giants, in the abstract, is something we should want. Strategic stability defined entirely by Beijing, with a hesitant Washington nodding along, is something else.

That is the line our diplomats — and our editors, our analysts, and yes, our voters — will need to watch this year. Indi kita pwede nga magpati lang. We cannot just take their word for it. Not Beijing’s. Not Washington’s. Especially not when the phrase being floated this week sounds, to anyone who has read a Chinese diplomatic communique in the last twenty years, less like an agreement than an invitation to step into the quicksand.