China remains focused on the United States as its main geopolitical rival, even though a recent Chinese report on military activity in the South China Sea highlighted the growing role of Washington’s allies in the region, experts told Radio Free Asia.
The report, released by the China-based South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative, or SCSPI, finds that U.S. military activity in the South China Sea remained extensive in 2025, despite signs of operational strain due to Washington’s increased activity in the Middle East.
Although the SCSPI is not government-led, it is widely seen by analysts as largely reflecting Beijing’s strategic outlook, and the report points to increased deployment by Japan and the Philippines in the South China Sea.
“China increasingly views efforts by Japan and the Philippines to deepen defense cooperation … as attempts by the two countries to challenge China’s core interests and cross a red line,” William Yang, a Northeast Asia analyst at the Belgium-based International Crisis Group, told RFA.
Japan participated in 71 U.S.-led exercises in and around the South China Sea last year — the highest number among U.S. partners — followed by the Philippines with 32, and Yang said the focus on Tokyo and Manila shows that Beijing views Washington’s allies as more formidable than in the past.
“They view the two countries’ assertive approach to maritime disputes with China as a threat to their maritime interests and sovereignty claims and believe it is necessary to start increasing pressure on the two countries,” Yang said.
He added that Chinese officials “increasingly criticize Japan and the Philippines for causing regional instability by engaging on the Taiwan issue” and “have taken steps to increase economic coercion and the gray zone against the two countries in recent months.”
Washington distracted?
Despite the increased focus on Washington’s allies in the report, Beijing’s biggest concern remains U.S. activities at sea, Yang said.
“However, in light of the détente between the United States and China under Trump and Washington’s continued entanglement in the Middle East, Beijing believes it must seize this opportunity to increase pressure on some US allies in the region, amid Washington’s distraction,” he said.
The SCSPI report concludes that indeed the growth of some US strategic platforms has slowed – it recorded nine US carrier strike group deployments to the South China Sea in 2025, up slightly from eight the previous year, but said the overall intensity of carrier operations had declined due to extended Middle East deployments, maintenance demands and operational accidents involving multiple carriers.
The most important issue for China, analysts say, is not the number of U.S. carriers entering the South China Sea, but how allied networks make the U.S. military presence more persistent.
“The report focuses on Japan and the Philippines because they constitute two of the most important allied pressure points on China’s maritime perimeter, but they create different military problems for Beijing,” Sylwia M. Gorska, a doctoral student in international relations at the University of Lancashire in the United Kingdom, told RFA.
Multilateral containment?
She said the Philippines represents China’s “forward access problem, highlighting its proximity to the disputed Scarborough Shoal and Spratly Islands, the Luzon Strait, the Bashi Channel and the southern approaches to Taiwan.
“From Beijing’s perspective, the Philippines is no longer just a claimant of the South China Sea,” she said, “it is becoming a convenient platform for access and surveillance.”
She said Manila’s increased surveillance capabilities would be useful for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, flights; maritime awareness; joint patrols, logistics; missile capable deployments; and crisis response along the Southern First Island Chain, the arc of islands stretching from Japan to Borneo through Taiwan and the Philippines, forming a key maritime boundary around the seas near China.
Japan, meanwhile, presents “a problem of depth and integration,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to be a country claiming the South China Sea to affect the military balance there,” Gorska said, adding that Tokyo’s surveillance capabilities, anti-submarine warfare, logistics, missile defense and interoperability with U.S. forces connect the South China Sea to Taiwan, the East China Sea and the broader Western Pacific.
But Gorska cautioned against interpreting the report as evidence that Beijing now views Japan and the Philippines as greater threats than the United States, saying it “should not be interpreted as a shift from a U.S.-centric threat perception to an ally-centric perception.”
The American “backbone”
Any resistance to China’s power projections in the region would still be led by Washington, Gorska said, adding that the United States would provide “the operational backbone of any serious regional contingency: command and control, ISR, undersea warfare, long-range strike, strategic mobility and extended deterrence.”
Gorska said China’s more focused focus reflects concerns that allied cooperation could transform periodic U.S. deployments into a more sustainable military posture.
“The issue is not a shift from ‘U.S. threat’ to ‘allied threat.’ It is about China’s stronger focus on how geography and ally interoperability reduce the time available to localize a crisis before U.S.-aligned forces can detect, reinforce and act on it.”
Yang said Beijing’s long-term strategic assessment remained largely unchanged.
“I don’t think there is a major strategic change in Beijing,” he said.
“Their threat assessment remains largely the same, namely preventing the United States from containing China’s ability to project power across the region and into the Pacific. »
But the report says Beijing cannot ignore Washington’s allies and the opportunities presented by U.S. military activity in the Middle East.
China “does see the need and opportunity to refine its approach and increase pressure on Japan and the Philippines at a time when U.S. attention and resource allocation to Asia is being undermined and distorted.”
Edited by Eugene Whong.