The United States is committed to deterring China from being able to dominate the Indo-Pacific, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in May 2026.
Hegseth, in his address, also called on allies and partners to invest more in their own security, while praising Australia, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam for demonstrating a commitment to maintaining peace through strength.
“Our partners in Asia have long understood that the bedrock of a durable partnership is not based on idealistic values but on the concrete alignment of national interests,” Hegseth told the defense conference hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. agreed, telling Channel News Asia that “it is imperative of all countries to increase their defense spending. There is no one country that is exempt from building your own national defense.”
Defense spending in Asia and Oceania rose by 8.1% in 2025 to $681 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The increased investment comes amid China’s military buildup, its coercion of Australia, Japan, the Philippines and other nations in the East China and South China seas, and Beijing’s threats to forcibly annex the self-governed island of Taiwan.
The U.S. position toward Taiwan has not changed, Hegseth said. The U.S. opposes any unilateral changes to the status quo by force, and federal law requires Washington to provide arms to Taiwan for its defense.
China illegally claims most of the South China Sea, and its maritime militia and coast guard ships have rammed, blocked, and fired water cannons and directed lasers at other nations’ civilian and government vessels operating lawfully within their internationally recognized exclusive economic zones. China continues to ignore a 2016 international tribunal ruling, in a case brought by the Philippines, that invalidated Beijing’s expansive sovereignty claims in the resource-rich sea, a vital global trade route.
China’s gray zone tactics extend to the East China Sea, including incursions around the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands.
“When we look across the region today there is rightful alarm regarding China’s historic military buildup and the expansion of its military activities in the region and beyond,” Hegseth said. “We share a clear-eyed assessment of that security environment and a mutual understanding that a Pacific dominated by any hegemon would unravel the regional balance of power and undermine the equilibrium we all seek to preserve.”
For the second consecutive year, Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun did not attend the long-running Shangri-La Dialogue, considered the region’s premier security summit. Beijing instead sent a delegation of lower-level representatives from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and academia. Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles, who also is deputy prime minister, called Dong’s absence a missed opportunity for frank, face-to-face discussions.
“We’ve seen China engage in the biggest conventional military buildup in the world since the end of the Second World War, and that has not happened with a strategic reassurance for other countries,” Marles told the Reuters news service.
China’s downgrading of its delegation indicates that Beijing wanted to avoid pointed inquiries about its maritime bullying, the status of Taiwan and China’s military readiness after the purge of top PLA leaders under Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, analysts said.
“My feeling is that they are trying to avoid tough questions,” Chong Ja Ian, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, told Reuters.
Xi’s yearslong purge of top military officials — more than 100 have been removed or are missing, according to researchers — is likely the leading reason Dong skipped the defense conference.
“There is no military figure who is fully trusted by China’s top leadership to explain the country’s security policies to the world,” the Nikkei Asia news site reported. “The wave of purges has contributed to China’s opaque security policies and its unwillingness to explain its position on the global stage.”