Philippines says it still faces severe threat from China despite Trump-Xi thaw

The Philippines remains under what its Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro called a severe threat from China, even after the recent summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping eased tensions between Washington and Beijing. Mr Teodoro made the statement on May 30, 2026 on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Asia's leading defence forum.

Mr Teodoro said it was understandable that big powers like the United States and China try to manage their differences because they have rough parity in military strength and the depth to absorb adjustments. Smaller states facing direct territorial and political pressure from China, he said, do not have that luxury and have no choice but to build resilience and resist Chinese aggression.

The comments reflect the long-running maritime dispute between Manila and Beijing in the South China Sea. China claims most of the South China Sea under its so-called nine-dash line. A 2016 arbitration ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague rejected this claim and upheld the Philippines' rights inside its Exclusive Economic Zone. China has refused to accept the ruling. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the same waters, which carry about one-third of all global maritime trade.

Mr Teodoro said US commitments to the Philippines under their 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty have not weakened either because of the Trump-Xi summit or because of the parallel war in West Asia. He added that the treaty is now reinforced by Manila's growing defence ties with Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The argument is that deterrence works better when several allied countries stand together against a common threat.

He also pushed back against reports that China had offered fertiliser and fuel to the Philippines during shortages triggered by the war in West Asia. Mr Teodoro said no matter how Beijing presented such assistance it did not change the underlying strategic picture, and called the offer guileful rather than a sign of long-term good faith.

The Philippines' approach, he said, is to build resilience by resisting pressure, strengthening alliances and quickly upgrading defence infrastructure. As part of that policy, in 2022 the Philippines became the first foreign buyer of the Indian BrahMos supersonic cruise missile system through a contract worth nearly 375 million US dollars. The Philippines has since pushed to install more BrahMos batteries along its western coast facing the South China Sea.

For India, the story matters because the Philippines is one of the clearest examples of how Indo-Pacific countries are aligning more closely with New Delhi on defence supplies and how India's Act East Policy is translating into hardware deliveries. It also illustrates the limits of great-power diplomacy: a thaw between Washington and Beijing does not automatically reduce pressure on smaller claimant states. For exam aspirants, key linked ideas are the Mutual Defence Treaty, the 2016 South China Sea arbitration award, ASEAN centrality and the BrahMos export programme.