To remind us of our sovereign rights, former foreign affairs secretary Carolos P. Romulo, the country’s first Pulitzer Prize winner, declared in his elocution ‘I Am a Filipino’:

“I am a Filipino–inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future. As such I must prove equal to a two-fold task–the task of meeting my responsibility to the past, and the task of performing my obligation to the future.

“I sprung from a hardy race, child many generations removed of ancient Malayan pioneers. Across the centuries the memory comes rushing back to me: of brown-skinned men putting out to sea in ships that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I see them come, borne upon the billowing wave and the whistling wind, carried upon the mighty swell of hope–hope in the free abundance of new land that was to be their home and their children’s forever.

“This is the land they sought and found. Every inch of shore that their eyes first set upon, every hill and mountain that beckoned to them with a green-and-purple invitation, every mile of rolling plain that their view encompassed, every river and lake that promised a plentiful living and the fruitfulness of commerce, is a hallowed spot to me.

“By the strength of their hearts and hands, by every right of law, human and divine, this land and all the appurtenances thereof–the black and fertile soil, the seas and lakes and rivers teeming with fish, the forests with their inexhaustible wealth in wild life and timber, the mountains with their bowels swollen with minerals–the whole of this rich and happy land has been, for centuries without number, the land of my fathers. This land I received in trust from them and in trust will pass it to my children, and so on until the world is no more.”

Mainland China’s overzealous dream to take over Taiwan at all cost is turning the Philippine Sea, Taiwan Strait, and South China Sea into a powder keg.

Recent military happenings indicate that things in the region are getting politically wobbly and militarily tilting on the edge. Under a Chinese ruler who some analysts dub as a psychopath, the aggression toward Taipei is getting more intense and precarious.

China’s push to ‘retake’ Taiwan is written all over and it starts with Xi Jinping’s revolting bullying of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and declaring much of the South China Sea as her country’s own under a dubious ’ten-dash line.’ To further extend his country’s dominion, he wants control over what is legitimately considered as international waters.

The one-China card should be blamed on the United Nations. When it admitted the People’s Republic of China (PROC) into its fold, it conveniently kicked out Taipei. Because the UN was conceived with bullies in mind, the entry of another intimidator like China was all too predictable. Now that the Chinese tyrant has grown so aggressive, the UN Security Council’s veto bloc has slowly changed the rubrics of the game. Predictably, the victim of the new rules is Taiwan.

China’s hegemony is not just about peace or territorial claim. Now donning the mantle as the world’s second richest and most powerful nation on the planet, XI continues to push for an agenda of hegemony. This was indisputable when he defied the ruling of the International Court of Justice in the Philippines’ bid under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

There is a hunch that China, in the long run, will have to face consequential sanctions from its people. In a world connected online, migration becomes an attractive option for the younger Chinese generation. As opportunities to enjoy inherent freedoms are despotically coerced and restricted, transnational movement, at the very least, will encourage a certain portion of the Chinese population to transfer residence to other parts of the world.

Like Russia, China will prospectively disintegrate in much the way the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) was fragmented, though it is not forthcoming yet.