You put too much stock into what the "neighborhood" thinks, when your idea of the "neighborhood" consists merely of the Philippines and Vietnam.
The two most significant recent geopolitical developments have been the solidification on the China-Russia alignment, and the solidification of the US-PH and US-VN alignment. Can you tell me which is of greater significance? We chose Russia over VN-PH, because the former is a great power, a major military power, with the largest energy reserves in the world. The kind of country you want batting for your team. In contrast, VN-PH have negligible militaries, negligible economies (smaller than most of our provinces), and their "human capital" consists of banana harvesters, nail technicians, and maids for export, which regardless of political relations, will always be desperate to work in coastal Chinese cities. The US finds these countries more palatable allies because their military troops need cheap "adult entertainment and services", and have always been bizarrely taken by squat, brown "women" with highly simian features.
You seem to be under the delusion that PH and VN are trophy wives that caused China to lose big when it failed to court them in its "post-2009 PR battle". The truth is, they are not trophy wives but ragged, wrinkly, deformed peasant women. Their opinions and alignments are worth nothing, and come with an unreasonably high price tag to boot (requiring that China relinquish its territorial sovereignty). Instead, we scored a real Russian trophy wife post-2009, and couldn't be happier