Asia unites to navigate the volatile US-China rivalry
The global contest between China and the US poses a linked question for Asia: what will each superpower demand or deliver?
The global contest between China and the US poses a linked question for Asia: what will each superpower demand or deliver?
The chances and choices of the great rivalry defined back-to-back summits of Southeast Asian leaders in Kuala Lumpur and at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
The regional dimensions of the ASEAN Summit were Myanmar’s war, and an agreement that Timor-Leste will become the association’s 11th member in October. Joining ASEAN is a defining moment of reconciliation between Timor-Leste and Indonesia, yet it also expresses the region’s response to global turmoil.
ASEAN will find international partnerships where it can, while it deepens regional integration. Navigating the superpower fight, ASEAN will refuse to choose between Beijing and Washington, seeking gains from both.
After chairing the ASEAN summit, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, flew to the Singapore Dialogue to speak against “the onslaught of arbitrary imposition of trade restrictions” and the growing risk of global fragmentation in a world of “fractures and fault lines”.
Anwar advocated for “active non-alignment” to balance “a strong and enduring United States presence in the region” with “vibrant and firm ties with China”.
The solution was co-operation without coercion, he said, and balance without bloc politics.
Anwar’s denunciation of spheres of influence echoed the other keynote speech to the Singapore Dialogue, by France’s President Emmanuel Macron. He said Europe and Asia must work together to avoid becoming “collateral victims” of unbalanced choices made by China and the US.
Macron said Washington and Beijing were instructing all other nations, “you have to choose your side”. Spheres of influence would be “in reality, spheres of coercion”, he said.
He also called for “strategic autonomy” as he questioned Donald Trump’s commitment to US alliances.
“We live in a time of a potential erosion of long-time alliances whose credibility and clout is under threat,” Macron said. “Alliances, by the element of balance they brought, had been essential to maintain stability in Europe and Asia; and the sense that their promise might not be ironclad is ushering in a new instability.”
Surveying that instability, the 2025 Asia-Pacific security assessment released at Shangri-La by the International Institute for Strategic Studies said the US-China bilateral relationship “is more strained than it has ever been at any other point in the 21st century”. Trade, technology and Taiwan set the tone for “deep mutual distrust”.
The distrust was given dramatic expression by US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth’s declaration that the US could fight and win a war with China that could arrive in 2027.
Hegseth’s Shangri-La speech shredded American “strategic ambiguity” about whether it would defend Taiwan, designed both to deter China from attack and prevent Taiwan from a reckless declaration of independence.
“President Trump has said that Communist China will not invade Taiwan on his watch. Our goal is to prevent war. And we will do this with a strong shield of deterrence,” Hegseth said. “But if deterrence fails, we will be prepared to do what the Department of Defence does best – fight and win – decisively.”
Hegseth warned that China was “concretely and credibly preparing to use military force to alter the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. We know that [China’s President] Xi Jinping has ordered his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027”.
The People’s Liberation Army was training every day for such an attack, Hegseth said.
“Let me be clear: any attempt by Communist China to conquer Taiwan would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world. We are not going to sugar-coat it. The threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent,” he said.
Hegseth said the Trump administration would treat the Indo-Pacific as its primary defence theatre, leaving Europe to take more responsibility for its own defence.
Hegseth said “America First does not mean America alone” as he promised “uncomfortable and tough conversations” so allies shared the security burden. Facing “formidable” threats from China and North Korea, he said, Asian nations should spend 5 per cent of their GDP on defence. The US military budget next year would pass $US1 trillion ($1.5 trillion).
For the first time since 2019, China’s Defence Minister Admiral Dong Jun did not attend the Shangri-La Dialogue. The absence indicated that Xi had not decided on a clear line for his minister. Xi, like the rest of Asia, ponders what the Trump administration will deliver.
Graeme Dobell, a journalist since 1971, writes on Australia foreign and defence policy.
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