The Philippines has no capacity to "face off" with China, or for that matter with anyone else. Neither have they any assurance that the US will provide any military backing, in fact the US has often said that it does not consider events in disputed territory to be attacks on the Philippines (which would trigger a mutual defense treaty). They'll push as far as they can without initiating combat, not because somebody's given them courage but because they see it as a situation they can exploit (and of course as a situation in which they are inherently right).
Despite their lack of capacity, the Philippines has regularly arrested Chinese fisherman and impounded their boats, for years. This is the first time I can remember when the Chinese actively protected fishing boats. They're presumably making a point of shoving around the least capable co-claimant in the SCS disputes, and also probing to see what responses from the other claimants, and from the US, will be. I wouldn't expect either side to start shooting, though of course things don't always go as planned.
The Philippines will try to extract maximum leverage out of the incident. They're already stressing that inspections found the Chinese ships with coral, giant clams, and sharks, trying to position themselves not only as defenders of their own territory but also as defenders of the marine environment. That claim is a bit specious, as Philippine fishermen routinely harvest all of the above and sell them to the Chinese, but they will milk it for all it's worth.
The US may try to work some leverage of its own by pushing for a more regular presence at Subic (very close to the contested area), thought it's not likely they'd work for anything with the word "permanent" in it. They might send a ship or aircraft to "observe", if they've anything close enough, though that's less likely. They might also announce re-opening discussion of the sale (on affordable terms, which would have to be cheap) of fighters, more credible warships, or shore-based surface-surface and/or surface-air missiles, which of course is what the Philippines will be working toward.
We'll see.
PS: On a possibly ironic note, the Philippine Navy ship involved, the Gregorio Del Pilar (a retired US Coast Guard cutter), is named after a hero of the Philippine-American War, who died in a noble but completely futile action against a hugely superior American force. Hopefully history will not go about repeating itself.
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