When the ground tore open beneath the Philippines last week, Roldan Dante was working in a nearby town. By the time he could return, his home in Glan, Sarangani province, had collapsed. His wife and two young children were gone. “If only I had known this was going to happen, I would have picked them up,” he told This Week in Asia, as social workers pressed government cash aid into his hands. “I feel traumatised. I’m in shock and I still can’t accept what happened.” Dante’s loss speaks to the...

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr did not dwell on warships or water cannons when he rose to speak at the country’s Independence Day celebrations on Friday. Instead, he signalled a new strategy in broaching the topic of the South China Sea: recasting the waterway not as an arena of territorial disputes, but rather as a shared vulnerability. In doing so, analysts say he may have found a way to keep China’s behaviour in the regional conversation without triggering direct confrontation...