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Shi Jiangtao

Japan and the Philippines are deepening defence and maritime cooperation over shared concerns about China, with broad implications that analysts say reach beyond the South China Sea.
Following Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr’s state visit to Tokyo last week, the two sides agreed to launch formal talks on military intelligence sharing and maritime boundary delimitation, while elevating ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership.
Beijing responded strongly, denouncing the boundary talks as “illegal and invalid” and dispatching coastguard vessels on Monday for law enforcement patrols east of Taiwan.
Also on Monday, Manila and Hanoi elevated their ties to an enhanced strategic partnership and renewed their memorandum of agreement on defence cooperation, with Marcos saying it would bolster their joint capabilities in maritime security.
At a joint news conference in Manila with Vietnamese leader To Lam, Marcos declared that “as fellow claimant states, we reaffirm that maintaining peace, stability and the freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea remains non-negotiable”.
Observers said these developments were linking Beijing’s most sensitive maritime concerns – from the South and East China seas to the Taiwan Strait – into a more integrated security front.
Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, a research fellow at the Manila-based Asia Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, said closer Japan-Philippines military and logistical cooperation would complicate Beijing’s planning in a Taiwan crisis.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
While intelligence sharing and evacuation planning might already be under way, Pitlo said Beijing’s greater worry was its two coastal neighbours “linking the maritime flashpoints into one unified theatre”.
“That view may serve as the foundation of a collective security consciousness, which can deepen and result in more combined action,” he said.
Pitlo said Japan and the Philippines would probably receive evacuees in a potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait, and Japan’s Yaeyama Islands and Batanes in the Philippines would be likely entry points.
He cited dual-use assets such as the new Taiwan-Japan ferry as evidence of blurred lines between civilian infrastructure and crisis preparedness. The ferry linking Keelung in Taiwan and Japan’s Ishigaki Island serves tourists but could also be used for evacuation in the event of a war, according to Reuters.
“How invested Tokyo and Manila [are], and how much they see their security as being tied to Taipei’s fate, may shape their responses if deterrence fails,” he said.
“While Beijing has clearly drawn a red line, the positions of Japan and the Philippines are still ambiguous and less articulated.”
“US reaction is crucial,” he added.
Shi Yinhong, a professor of international affairs at Renmin University, said the moves underscored China’s increasingly challenging strategic environment, marked by coalition-building by the US and its allies.
He noted that the Philippines “has long been one of Japan’s most important strategic partners outside the US”.
“Both countries have sharp conflicts with China. Especially now, as China engages in full confrontation with Japan, Tokyo has even greater need to strengthen ties with Manila,” Shi said.
He also pointed out that Hanoi – despite its tradition of “bamboo diplomacy”, or hedging between Beijing and Washington – was deepening ties with both Tokyo and Manila because “Vietnam’s ambitions in the South China Sea stand in direct opposition to China’s claims”.
Repeated confrontations in the South China Sea, especially around Second Thomas Shoal, known in Chinese as Renai Jiao, have sharply worsened ties between Beijing and Manila.
Meanwhile, Hanoi remains one of the most vocal challengers of Beijing’s claims and energy activities in the disputed waterway.
Beijing’s relations with Tokyo, already strained by East China Sea disputes and historical grievances, plunged further after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks in November suggesting that an attack on Taiwan could trigger a Japanese military response.
Stephen Nagy, a professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo, said tighter Japan-Philippines coordination complicated China’s operational timelines.
“Access, logistics and evacuation planning thicken the battlespace around Taiwan’s southern approaches,” he said.
He added that dual‑use assets and hardened defences in Japan’s southern Ryukyu Islands, which host major US bases, heightened uncertainty, “potentially slowing Chinese decision-making and raising escalation risks in any contingency”.
He said the deeper significance was not just about weapons but the integration of intelligence and theatre-level coordination between the East and South China seas.
“Hardware can be counted; networks are harder to disrupt,” he said.


Nagy said the partnership would also reinforce Japan’s wider “latticework diplomacy”, linking the Philippines with Australia, Vietnam and the Washington-led Quad grouping, which includes Tokyo, New Delhi and Canberra.
“This network raises the reputational and operational costs of [China’s] grey‑zone coercion,” he said, adding that Beijing might respond asymmetrically through economic leverage, calibrated military exercises, and wedge‑driving within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
Nagy cautioned that China’s high-handed response risked solidifying the very alignment it sought to weaken.
Pitlo made a similar point, suggesting that boiling tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, along with Washington’s pressure on allies to step up, could be an opportunity for Tokyo’s rearmament plans.
They would “create spaces for Japan to assume bigger roles in Pacific security”, although this might inevitably strain ties with Beijing, he noted.
“Beijing may pressure Asean countries to distance themselves from Tokyo’s security overtures, but an overbearing response may create diplomatic friction or push them to be more welcoming of Japanese offers,” Pitlo said.
Washington’s policy volatility, especially US President Donald Trump’s transactional approach to alliances and his pending decision on arms sales to Taiwan, has also driven countries in the region to build their own webs of security ties.
Pitlo noted that delays in arms transfers and fears of abandonment or being used as pawns in bargaining with China were driving US allies to diversify security ties.
Nagy described Manila’s deepening defence ties with both Tokyo and Hanoi, among other minilateral arrangements, as “partly insurance against unpredictability” but also part of “structural shifts towards distributed deterrence”.
“Even with steady US engagement, middle powers increasingly seek autonomous capacity and diversified security ties,” he said.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last weekend, Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jnr said his country was under “severe threat” from China despite the recent summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. He said Manila had no choice but to “be resilient and to stand up against Chinese aggression”.
In another interview with Bloomberg, Teodoro outlined a “convergence endeavour” of deeper ties with partners, including Tokyo, Hanoi and Taipei aimed at deterring Beijing’s coercion.
Echoing Marcos, who warned last month that Manila would probably be involved in any conflict over Taiwan due to its proximity, Teodoro said his country was seeking closer ties with Taipei in “non-taboo areas” short of diplomatic recognition, including a growing economic corridor.
He also mentioned safe-harbour arrangements to evacuate civilians caught in a potential Taiwan conflict, noting that 200,000 Filipinos lived on the island.
But Teodoro said Manila’s goal in strengthening ties was not to “get characterised as a bloc, but as an active defence alliance”.
Speaking at the Shangri-La forum before travelling to Manila, Lam warned against a regional order where “the big fish swallows the small fish”. He also called for the creation of mechanisms to actively prevent conflicts from spiralling.
Looking ahead, Pitlo said Manila’s closer cooperation with the US and Japan could help upgrade its coastguard and military capacity, while also increasing exposure in a Taiwan or South China Sea crisis.
“A more capable armed forces and a reassuring alliance may increase the position of Manila in talks with Beijing,” he said. “However, deeper integration also carries the risk of exposure to the vicissitudes of China-US and China-Japan relations.”
Nagy said there were dual possibilities, depending on how Beijing chose to respond.
“In a decade, deeper cooperation could either stabilise deterrence or sharpen fault lines. The Philippines gains capacity, but also visibility as a frontline state,” he said.


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Tokyo-Manila defence cooperation is linking Pacific flashpoints, with broad implications for Beijing, analysts say


Tokyo-Manila defence cooperation is linking Pacific flashpoints, with broad implications for Beijing, analysts say.


How Japan and the Philippines are building a maritime security front against China

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Tokyo-Manila defence cooperation is linking Pacific flashpoints, with broad implications for Beijing, analysts say

Tokyo-Manila defence cooperation is linking Pacific flashpoints, with broad implications for Beijing, analysts say