Tina S. Clemente is Professor at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines (UP), Diliman. She earned her Ph.D. at the School of Economics at the same university. Her research interests include China Studies, Philippines–China economic relations, economic history, and development. Dr. Clemente is a former president of the Philippine Association for Chinese Studies and the first editor-in-chief of the Chinese Studies Journal. In 2022, Dr. Clemente received the Gawad Tsanselor Sa Natatanging Guro, the most prestigious award for UP Diliman faculty that recognizes excellence in teaching, research, and service.

Notwithstanding different calibrations in dealing with China—scoring a legal victory through the arbitral ruling, cooperating while shelving maritime claims, or posing resistance while engaging more vigorously in building alliances—the main critique on the Philippine security perspective is that it has wide room for improving strategic calculation. The perennial but unresolved question is how the Philippines can navigate its responses to China’s coercive levers. We examine strategies and implications of resilience vis-à-vis vulnerability in considering the options of an economically and militarily weaker country in dispute. We first contextualize the bilateral relations in recent years and the turn of the academic discourse then frame the notion of resilience in a game-theoretic context. We then demonstrate how pay-offs and actions in a multistage bilateral interaction are contingent on sanction-sender types, sanction-receiver’s resilience, and the players’ strategic reckoning of each other. Finally, we analyze the interaction space and particularize the scenario of a resilient Philippines.