‘Real and could be imminent’: Hegseth warns on China threat, says US ready to fight

Singapore: US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has delivered a blistering warning to China that America stands ready to “fight and win decisively” if it seeks military conflict over Taiwan, declaring the threat posed is real and could be imminent.

In a strident speech to top defence officials from across the Indo-Pacific, Hegseth said the region was America’s “priority theatre” and declared the Trump administration had a renewed focus on deterring China.

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth speaking in Singapore on Saturday.Credit: Getty Images

He said the US would not instigate conflict with China or seek regime change, but in a significant declaration of policy said “we will not be pushed out of this critical region, and we will not let our allies and partners be subordinated and intimidated”.

Hegseth’s remarks are some of the strongest to date from the Trump administration about its preparedness to defend the Indo-Pacific with military force in the face of increasing Chinese territorial aggression in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

He also used the speech on Saturday to press US partners in Asia to boost defence spending towards 5 per cent of gross domestic product.

Hegseth had already pushed his Australian counterpart, Richard Marles, to ramp up defence spending to counter China’s increasing assertiveness. Marles declined to divulge what figure the pair discussed, but the demand would likely mean billions of dollars in extra defence funding.

Hegseth’s position statement will be judged by political leaders against the backdrop of recent US action seen to have fostered uncertainty across the region, including the threat of steep tariffs on many Asian countries and the dismantling of US foreign aid programs that experts have warned will create a soft-power vacuum for China to fill.

Repeating US intelligence claims that Chinese President Xi Jinping had ordered the People’s Liberation Army be ready to execute a takeover of Taiwan by 2027, Hegseth said this would result in devastating consequences for the world

“There’s no reason to sugar coat it. The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent,” he said in the speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Asia’s leading security conference.

America’s goal was to prevent war through forceful deterrence, he said – but if that failed, the US would act.

“If deterrence fails and if called upon by my commander in chief, we are prepared to do what the Department of Defence does best, to fight and win decisively,” Hegseth said.

The Lowy Institute’s Susannah Patton, director of the think tank’s South-East Asia program, said the speech would be well-received by US allies such as Australia and Japan because it continued the previous administration’s commitment to defence co-operation in Asia.

“But the starkly confrontational tone on China won’t reassure South-east Asian countries who worry about the risk of rising tensions or conflict,” she said.

Hegseth’s speech contrasted starkly with the tone struck earlier by French President Emmanuel Macron in his address to the conference on Friday evening.

French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his speech on Friday.Credit: AP

Macron warned that the intensifying rivalry between the US and China posed the greatest threat to global security, saying the two superpowers were charting a dangerous course to split global alliances into two competing camps.

“The instruction given to all the others [is] you have to choose your side. If we do so, we will kill the global order, and we will destroy methodically, all the institutions we created after the Second World War in order to preserve peace,” Macron said.

He issued a rallying call for Europe and Asia to build new coalitions to reject bullying, uphold trade norms, and protect countries’ sovereignty, and to ensure they were not “collateral victims” to the “choices made by the superpowers”. It is an appeal that will resonate across the Indo-Pacific region, which feels increasingly wedged between China and America.

In a thinly veiled swipe at the Trump administration’s weakened interest in defending Ukraine, Macron denounced the view that the war was a solely European conflict, and one that was sapping resources from other arenas, saying Ukraine’s fall to Russia would undermine US attempts to deter China from seizing Taiwan.

“Allow me to say, this is a total mistake,” Macron said. “Because if we consider that Russia could be allowed to take a part of the territory of Ukraine without any restriction, without any constraint, without any reaction of the global order ... what could happen in Taiwan? What will you do the day something happens in the Philippines?”

Macron also took aim at China, saying it should do more to influence its ally North Korea against joining Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“If China doesn’t want NATO being involved in South-east Asia or in Asia, they should prevent North Korea from engaging on European soil,” he said.

Macron said global stability was being jeopardised by double standards in how the international community confronted key humanitarian challenges such as the war in Gaza and climate change.

“If we abandon Gaza, if we consider there is a free pass for Israel, even if we do condemn the terrorist attacks, we kill our own credibility ... what is at stake is clearly the global order, and what is at stake is our credibility to protect this global order,” he said.

In a break with previous years, China has not sent its Defence Minister Dong Jun to this year’s dialogue, forgoing the potential for a bilateral meeting with the US on the sidelines of the conference as has occurred in previous years. Beijing has instead dispatched a low-level military university delegation.

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