By Chen Hanghui
In 2025, amid the intensifying rivalry among major powers, rising tensions over territorial sovereignty disputes, and growing security anxieties among regional countries, the risks of conflict and instability in the Asia-Pacific have continued to accumulate. In the face of these compounded challenges, the Asia-Pacific has nonetheless demonstrated strong resilience and dynamism in development.
Over the past year, the US has continued to deepen and advance the so-called Indo-Pacific Strategy, tightening alliance-based alignments. Japan, the Philippines, and certain other countries have stepped up defense collusion, deliberately stirring up regional disputes and crudely interfering in the internal affairs of other states. The US and its allies, through joint military exercises and foreign arms sales, have densely deployed assets such as the Typhon mid-range missile system, B-1B strategic bombers, and F-35B fighter jets in the Asia-Pacific, posing a serious threat to regional security. The US has conducted frequent joint drills with allies, including Japan, Australia, and the Philippines, in the western Pacific, deeply embedding them into the framework of its Indo-Pacific Strategy and turning them into strategic pawns. Within just a year and a half, the US, Japan, and the ROK have carried out the Freedom Edge naval and air joint exercises three times, accelerating the construction of a joint operational system and driving an upsurge and escalation of regional bloc confrontation.
The year 2025 has also been marked by frequent conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region. First, India and Pakistan erupted into large-scale, high-intensity military clashes. Subsequently, Thailand and Cambodia engaged in serious armed confrontations along their border due to territorial disputes. Although these conflicts were temporarily eased through mediation by multiple parties, their root causes remain unresolved. After brief ceasefires, fierce fighting broke out along the Thai-Cambodian border again and continues to this day.
What is more alarming is that, amid the accelerating rightward shift of Japan's domestic politics, Japan has emerged as a major source of instability in the Asia-Pacific region. In March this year, the Japanese Defense Minister proposed to the US Secretary of Defense that the Korean Peninsula, the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea and surrounding areas be treated as a single theater, and called for the integrated deployment of the US, Japanese, ROK, Australian, and Philippine military forces. This proposal starkly exposed Japan's dangerous intention to drive military confrontation in East Asia. In October, after Sanae Takaichi assumed office as prime minister, Japan sharply increased its defense budget, aggressively sought to break through restrictions on defense equipment exports, pushed to revise the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, linked a so-called "Taiwan contingency" to a "survival-threatening situation," and openly signaled its willingness to intervene in regional conflicts. All these fully expose the unresolved evil influence of Japanese militarism. Such actions not only gravely undermine China-Japan relations and disrupt the post-war international order, but also pose a serious practical threat to peace and stability in Asia and beyond.
In the face of these compounded challenges, the Asia-Pacific has nonetheless maintained peace and stability while demonstrating strong resilience and dynamism in development. It has become the most dynamic part of the global economy and a principal engine of global growth. China cannot develop in isolation from the Asia Pacific region, while the Asia Pacific region cannot prosper without China. Amid profound changes in the global landscape, China has consistently acted as a champion of peace in the region, a practitioner of openness and cooperation, and a defender of a fair and just order. Only by embracing the vision of a shared future, upholding a common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security concept, and working together to address risks and challenges can we continue to create new Asia-Pacific miracles.
(The author is from the Chinese PLA National Defense University.)