Former Vice President Joe Biden on the campaign trail. Photo: AP / news13 ith the American presidential election less than fifty days away, some Filipino Americans who vote the Democratic ticket find themselves in a quandary. Many of these Fil-Ams live in the East or West Coasts of the United States. And while in the past, mostly domestic American issues took center stage, in this election, things are different. And that difference is China. Since 2012, Communist China has unlawfully occupied Scarborough Shoal, a rock formation located in the South China sea. Also known as Panatag Shoal—or Bajo de Masinloc during Spanish colonial times—it lies just 223 km off the Philippine coast. By contrast, it is 864 km from China's coast. The shoal is also within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone (EEZ). China, however, claims the shoal, along with a group of islands known as the Spratlys, and most of the South China Sea. That claim is based on what China calls its nine-dash line. However, as noted in Wikipedia, "on 12 July 2016, an arbitral tribunal constituted under Annex VII to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ruled that China has no legal basis for claiming 'historic rights' within its nine-dash line in a case brought by the Philippines." China's claim was wholly debunked in a unanimous verdict by the court. However, the United States, under the Democratic Obama administration, did next to nothing to help the Philippines, despite its closes ties and shared history with the U.S. In fact, to the consternation of its military advisers, the Obama administration looked the other way as China built and fortified one artificial island after another in the South China sea. Those artificial islands now endanger not just the Philippines and its Southeast Asian neighbors—they threaten Guam and other U.S. territories in the Western Pacific. Unlike Obama, President Donald Trump is standing up to China. The question uppermost in many Democratic-leaning Filipinos is: Will candidate Joe Biden be another Obama who will fold in front of Chinese President Xi Jinping? Will he appease the Chinese leader the way Obama did, or will he stand up to the Chinese and stop them from imposing a dystopian future on humanity? China poses an existential threat to all freedom-loving countries of the world. At present, only the United States is powerful enough to contain China. But America must have a leader with a backbone. A leader who realizes that totalitarianism and tyranny go against everything America stands for. Does Biden have what it takes? Filipino-American Democrats hope and pray he does. Published 9/17/2020