Actually, both the Chinese and Philippine side have mistakes
The mistakes of the Chinese was the fact that they're not the law in the UNCLOS, where it states that water 200 Nautical miles from the mainland is under the control of the country where it is near to. It is like going to another persons house and not follow or respect
the rules in the house. Another mistake of the Chinese was to overreact to the problem, since the water is in the EEZ of the Philippines,A Philippine soldier/army/guards has every right to arrest the Chinese, if the Chinese disagree, then they could at least tell their ambassador after proper legal actions have been taken. Third, this is somewhat a continuation of the second statement in which China is over reacting. The Philippines did send its biggest ship, but it doesn't mean that we are harassing the fishermen. If we used another ship, do you think it would make another difference?
After telling the mistakes of China, the Philippines, for me, also commuted mistakes. One is that why was the biggest ship used? Why can't they use other ships that would not look intimidating to the Chinese. Another mistake of the Philippines was that knowing the Chinese was already intimidated, they could have at least started to send smaller ships which could lower the tensions of both sides. At the start it was only 2 vs 1, now, I think its 3 vs 1 with the Hamilton Class cutter being withdrawn
I'm a Filipino and I understand that both sides don't want to look bad, I think this is normal since who the hell would want to look bad to other nations in this world? This could affect future diplomatic talks with different countries in the future. I really hope that this problem could be solved quickly so that there wouldn't be a series of other problems that could happen because of this.