A new strategic reality is taking shape across the Indo-Pacific, driven by China’s rapid expansion of military and industrial power on land, at sea, in space, and in cyberspace. That forces the US, UK and democracies across the Indo-Pacific to rethink deterrence itself.
At this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth captured the mood bluntly: “We’re not going to sugar-coat it. The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent.” He warned that Beijing’s militarization of every domain, coupled with industrial speed and political control, represents a test not only of US power but of the free world’s ability to adapt before it’s too late.
“We’ve all seen the videos and pictures of water cannons, ship-to-ship collisions, and illegal boardings at sea,” Hegseth said. “We’re also seeing the illegal seizing and militarizing of lands in the South China Sea. These actions reveal a lack of respect for neighbors and they challenge sovereignty, freedom of navigation, and overflight. We are closely watching China’s destabilizing actions. Any unilateral attempt to change the status quo in the South China Sea and the First Island Chain by force or coercion is unacceptable.”
That urgency now defines alliance strategy from the South China Sea to the Sea of Japan. Shipbuilding capacity, space operations, and gray-zone coercion are no longer separate stories, and are converging into a strategic, regional strategy designed to erode deterrence through constant pressure.
At the same time, internal fissures inside China’s military-political structure, coupled with renewed alignment among countries such as Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea, are altering the strategic equation in unpredictable ways.
As nations recalibrate, one central question drives the debate: can the US, UK, and its allies adapt fast enough to offset Beijing’s manufacturing capability and industrial momentum?
“The industrial power of China is the simple way of putting anxiety at the moment,” said Philip Shetler‑Jones, senior research fellow for Indo‑Pacific Security at London’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). “The scale and pace of shipbuilding gives China not just the ability to put a large fleet at sea and more modernized equipment, but also the ability to maintain and potentially replace losses in war, which is a big difference between China and almost everyone else.
The capacity to regenerate force through industrial tempo is a foundational shift, not just for China’s naval forces but also for production, sustainment, and modernization of air and space systems, not to mention its capabilities in offensive and defensive cyber, electronic warfare, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). That means deterrence no longer starts with defeating a single threat, but preventing a cascade of challenges across multiple warfighting domains.
“Obviously there’s a quantity problem,” said Gregory Poling, director and senior fellow in the Southeast Asia Program and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to China’s production engine. “Biggest navy by number, biggest coast guard, largest rocket force in the world, which means that all of the smaller states, particularly Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan are thinking more about asymmetric capabilities, about intermediate range strike, about uncrewed platforms.
“There’s a ton of interest just over the last few years in places like the Philippines and Indonesia on getting external support for more uncrewed platforms. A lot of investments in things like the BrahMos missile system from India for both the Philippines and Vietnam. The strategic rationale is more or less identical to what you hear on the US side for the Marines and increasingly the Army – the need to engage in relatively low cost sea-denial capabilities because it would be a fool’s game to try to match China tonnage for tonnage these days.”
The two linchpin countries in the Indo-Pacific
Regional deterrence is assuming a new geography of frontline actors beyond America’s traditional Pacific power role. At the tip of the spear, physically and metaphorically, areJapan and the Philippines.
Japan is not just a heavy industry power with high-tech companies and space-based capabilities that surpass the UK’s, but a country whose geographic positioning across the Indo-Pacific is vital to Taiwan’s sustainment during a Chinese blockade. It’s also America’s most stable ally and linchpin of its Pacific strategy. At the same time, its own sea lanes would be threatened by the presence of a massive Chinese naval force should Taiwan be cut off. Without Japan’s strategic role, the US’s entire posture in the region doesn’t work, according to Shetler-Jones.
“It has, perhaps after China, still the most capable navy in the region. It’s gradually continuing to dispense with post-World War II constraints and taboos flowing from the constitutional interpretations of that. It’s a huge economy. So when they go from two percent to three or four (in defense spending of GDP), it makes an enormous difference. They’re able to translate that money into capability because they also have the industrial power, the high-tech companies, and the heavy industry. They’re in lots of areas.”
Japan would be strategically valuable just from where it sits geographically.
“If you’re worried about Taiwan, Japan is by far the most critical variable about how Taiwan gets support, either with Japan’s acquiescence or even from Japan under certain circumstances, Japan sort of coming in behind the US or with the US,” he said.
Geography also drives the significance of the Philippines in any Chinese foray into Taiwan, and for the same reason as Japan in that it comes right to the edge of Taiwan’s maritime zones.
“Without the Japanese and the Filipinos, we’re not an Indo-Pacific power, at least not in the First Island Chain,” said Poling. “You can’t possibly contest Chinese A2/AD capabilities if you’re operating from Guam and from Hawaii. You have to do it from Japan and from the Philippines.
“That’s our biggest political asset. It allows everything else [such as] leveraging that for things like Marine Littoral Regiments in the southwest islands or [around] Japan. Doing heel-to-toe rotations in the Philippines makes a big difference, at least if you want to be able to hold Chinese vessels at risk in order to enhance deterrence.”
Both the Philippines and Japan play key roles in surveilling the First Island Chain – supplying eyes, ears, and sensors so the US and its allies can monitor all points of ingress and egress.
“Our undersea capabilities are the ones most talked about, and it still is our greatest edge,” said Poling. “It’s the one capability the US Navy has that China can’t compete with, at least not yet. The ability to ensure that the US sub fleet has uncontested access everywhere in the First Island Chain, and China cannot in the inverse break out of the First Island Chain uncontested, is key.”
Frontline allies
The strategic landscape of the Indo-Pacific is shifting around two central realities: China’s accelerating military-industrial output and the emergence of new frontline actors essential to preserving regional stability. Beijing’s ability to rapidly field, modernize, and replace naval, air, and missile forces – combined with advances in space, cyber, ISR, and electronic warfare – has created a deterrence environment defined by tempo and scale.
Sustaining stability in that environment will depend on how quickly the US, UK, Japan, the Philippines, and other regional partners can synchronize their own industrial capacity, maritime posture, and intelligence networks. Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific is no longer anchored solely in US presence; it relies on the ability of frontline allies to hold the line, complicate Chinese operations, and keep the First Island Chain accessible.