What China hears in Hegseth’s Shangri-La speech is America softening its tone in their rivalry

As soon as US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth delivered his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD) on the morning of May 30, reporters scrambled to find and ambush attendees from China for their responses. 

Such piecemeal gathering of responses would not have been necessary had China sent its defence minister, who would have had the chance to give a full-throttle response on the same podium given to Mr Hegseth.

The zeal to get China’s response was a testament to China being the missing elephant in the room at the SLD, billed as Asia’s premier security forum. “How can it be called an Asian forum if the biggest Asian power isn’t properly represented?” said one disappointed attendee. 

China first sent its defence minister to the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2011, but for most years between 2012 and 2018 – and again in 2025 – it has been represented only by lower-ranking officers, with Beijing typically offering no public explanation for the defence chief’s absence.

And despite the warm, fuzzy aspiration for the world to be inclusive and multipolar, the reality is that, ultimately, the dynamics between the world’s two largest economies do affect the rest of the world. 

So what do the Chinese think of Mr Hegseth’s speech?

A common theme running through all responses was that the softer tone on China was a manifestation of the “constructive China-US relationship with strategic stability” agreed upon by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping when they met in Beijing in May. 

The head of the Chinese official delegation, Major General Meng Xiangqing, a professor at the People’s Liberation Army National Defence University, did not comment on the specific points raised by Mr Hegseth and said at a panel only that he hoped both sides could implement the consensus of the leaders to develop military ties in a healthy, stable and sustainable way. 

Chinese scholars, who were not part of the official delegation but whose main purpose in attending the SLD was to speak at the sidelines to media and interlocutors, went beyond the affirmation and gave some barbs.

They saw Mr Hegseth’s call for allies and partners to invest more in their defence as a sign of the US’ continued aspiration for hegemony as it grows weaker. 

Professor Wang Dong of Peking University said Mr Hegseth’s speech reflected a fundamental shift in the logic of US hegemony: from a generous provider of public goods to a power that’s increasingly counting pennies and intolerant of any perceived free-riders.

“Such MAGA foreign policy will continue for at least 11 more years — three during Trump’s current term, and likely for two more terms of the next president,” he told The Sunday Times, in reference to his expectation that the next president would be current Vice-President J.D. Vance. 

Another scholar, Retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, told ST: “If everyone is expected to shoulder the burden equally, then what makes you the big brother? If you want to be the big brother, you have to willingly allow yourself to be made use of by your little brothers.”

However, what the Chinese scholars denounce as US hegemony is welcomed by many in the region as evidence of Washington’s continued commitment to the region.

“The basic message from the secretary of war is that the US is a Pacific power, we are here to stay. And that’s what I think the regions want to hear,” Mr Bilahari Kausikan, a former senior diplomat, told ST.

Taiwan, for one, would love to heed Mr Hegseth’s call to increase its defence budget and buy more US arms – if the US is prepared to sell.

After months of political wrangling between the ruling and opposition parties, Taiwan approved additional funds in April for defence spending.

But just days after Mr Trump returned from his Beijing trip in May, US Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said Washington was pausing a planned US$14 billion (S$17.9 billion) arms package for Taiwan to preserve munitions needed for the Iran conflict.

At that time, the explanation suggested that the delay was driven by competing military demands rather than a concession to Beijing’s longstanding opposition to US arms sales to Taiwan. Yet that fig leaf fell off when Mr Hegseth told the security forum on May 30 that the US had enough munitions and would not pit the requirements of the Iran conflict against weapons earmarked for Taiwan. 

This revelation reinforced the perception that Mr Trump was serious when he described arms sales to Taiwan as a bargaining chip with China.

In his speech, Mr Hegseth did not mention Taiwan, a conspicuous departure from 2025’s forum, when he warned of an “imminent threat” of a Chinese attack on the island. 

Chinese scholars see the omission as further evidence that the “constructive and strategically stable” relationship agreed upon by Chinese and US leaders is alive and well.

Countries that want to heed the US’ call to step up more will have to weigh the costs and benefits of doing so.

If China blockades Taiwan, which then triggers the US to blockade the Strait of Malacca, Indonesia may be pressured to help China counter this US blockade of the strategic waterway that it sits astride. 

Such is the scenario painted by Lieutenant General Bambang Trisnohadi, Chief of Staff of territorial affairs, Indonesian National Armed Forces, at a panel at the security forum on May 30. 

And if Indonesia wants to be able to resist Beijing’s pressure and maintain “flexible strategic thought”, it will have to enhance its diplomatic, military and economic resilience, he said. 

This is an example of the difficult decisions countries in the region increasingly can’t run away from making, as great power rivalry between China and the US intensifies, despite both powers’ repeated proclamations of not forcing countries to choose.

It’s not an easy decision for Indonesia. China has been Indonesia’s largest trading partner for over a decade, and is its second-largest source of foreign direct investment after Singapore.

Indonesia will need to sharply build up its economic resilience to minimise the damage China’s economic warfare can inflict on it. 

Yet close economic ties with China and differences in religious ideology with America have not stopped Indonesia from developing closer security ties with the US.

Indonesia and the US announced a broad security framework called the Major Defence Cooperation Partnership (MDCP) in April 2026, right when the US was at war with Iran, a fellow Islamic nation of Indonesia. 

Reports that Washington was separately seeking blanket military overflight access to Indonesian airspace raised the prospect of US aircraft potentially conducting surveillance or support missions over the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca. 

This prospect is bound to make China uneasy, as it views these waters as critical to its security and trade flows.

The spectre of the “Malacca Dilemma” – a term coined by former Chinese president Hu Jintao in 2003 to describe Beijing’s concern that a rival power, particularly the US, could block the Strait of Malacca during a crisis – still lingers.