Japan-Philippines Defense Pact Hedges Against China

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Japan and the Philippines build up defense cooperation, Vietnam’s leadership is set to consolidate power, and Elon Musk’s Grok is banned in three countries.

The agreement is another step toward deepening military cooperation between the two countries and part of Japan’s wider push to expand its security relationships across the Indo-Pacific. The agreement lays out a framework for the two countries’ armed forces to provide each other with ammunition, fuel, food, and other materiel.

The pact helps implement the Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA)—signed in 2024 and implemented last year—which allows both countries’ armed forces to legally enter and perform operations in each other’s territory.

Japan has ramped up its security cooperation with the Philippines in other ways, too, steadily donating vessels and other equipment to the Philippine Coast Guard and Navy for years. There are now discussions that the navy could also acquire secondhand warships and air defense missiles from Japan.

These measures are aimed at hedging against Chinese coercion, with both countries facing Chinese claims to their territorial waters.

At the signing on Jan. 15, Philippine Foreign Minister Theresa Lazaro commented that both countries recognized “the value of promoting the rule of law, including the freedom of navigation and overflight, especially in the South China Sea.”

The Chinese response to the latest agreement was predictably spiky, with a Foreign Ministry spokesperson warning against the resurgence of “Japanese militarism.”

Manila has been ramping up joint exercises with various partners as a way of signaling international support for its efforts against Chinese maritime encroachment. Last year, the Philippines also held its largest ever joint exercise with Australia and signed visiting forces agreements with New Zealand and Canada. It is currently working on another agreement with France.

Going through the text of the most recent agreement with Japan, one other clause jumped out.

Regarding circumstances under which materiel could be transferred, one scenario included is one involving “protection measures or transportation of nationals of either Party or others, if appropriate, for their evacuation from overseas.”

This is not so unexpected; the safety of the millions of Filipinos living overseas has long been a major issue for the Philippines.

Still, the most obvious situation in which the Philippines or Japan might need to cooperate on a large scale to evacuate each other’s citizens would be a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has previously expressed concern about the some 190,000 Filipino residents in Taiwan should conflict occur.

These and other remarks have prompted angry responses from China, something that Japan also recently experienced when Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi commented that Chinese military action against Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation.”

Zooming out further, ramped up cooperation with the Philippines is part of a wider push by Japan to build up its security relationships across the region. Japan’s Official Security Assistance program, launched in 2023, dispenses security aid to five countries in Southeast Asia—the Philippines, plus Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and East Timor—as well as Sri Lanka, Tonga, and Papua New Guinea.

So far, though, the numbers remain small, with about $116 million budgeted in fiscal 2026. This is a 125 percent increase compared to the 2025 budget, which was itself was a 60 percent increase on 2024.

These developments in Japan and the Philippines predate U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, but they are inevitably influenced by current events.

Vietnam party congress kicks off. The 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam, which will select the country’s leaders for the next five years, started Monday and will run until Jan. 25.

The expectation is that To Lam, the general secretary of the Communist Party and national leader, will also assume the presidency.

The combination of the two roles is not unprecedented, but since Ho Chi Minh, this sort of dual-role arrangement has only occurred when one of the officeholders died before completing their term, letting the other step in.

To Lam being nominated to both would demonstrate a level of political dominance not seen in decades. Expect more on this in this newsletter next week.

Back-to-back crane collapses. Thailand was hit by two eerily similar tragedies in two days, with fatal crane collapses occurring on Jan. 14 and Jan. 15. One company was the contractor on both sites.

The two incidents—the first of which hit a passenger train, killing 32 people, and the second of which hit vehicles, killing two—has prompted furious scrutiny of Italian-Thai  Development (ITD), one of the country’s largest construction firms.

This is just the latest scandal to hit ITD. In March 2025, the State Audit Office building, under construction by ITD, collapsed following a major earthquake with an epicenter in Myanmar. It was the only building in Bangkok to collapse, and 95 people were killed.

Thai authorities responded by indicting 23 individuals, including the company president. At least one other fatal incident also occurred at an ITD expressway construction site in 2025.

Responding to the latest incident, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, perhaps with one eye on the country’s upcoming Feb. 8 election, ordered the government to look for ways to revoke ITD’s contracts at the two sites where the accidents occurred, pursue legal action, and blacklist the company.

The latest scandals reflect not just bad practice at one company, but a wider industry problem.

In March 2025, following another fatal collapse that killed five people on the Rama II Road—the same location as the most recent crane incident—local media noted that there had been more than 2,500 construction-related accidents since 2019 on this road alone.

Laotian leader extends time in office. On Jan. 9, Laotian President Thongloun Sisoulith was reappointed for a second term as the general secretary of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party at the party’s 12th National Congress.

The 80-year-old leader served as a teacher in the Pathet Lao, the revolutionary group that toppled the country’s monarchy.

There was a generational shift at this party congress: Five Politburo members born in the 1940s and 1950s retired to make way for younger technocratic figures.

The question remains whether this transition will help Laos hit its development goals. The country is trying to leave behind its “least-developed country” status within the United Nations.

If this happens, Laos will lose various privileges afforded to least-developed countries, such as preferential trade treatment, but the state press seems keen on the recategorization as a symbol of progress.

The congress also declared an ambitious goal to become an upper-middle income country by 2055.

Under pressure from the United States and China alike, Cambodia is making a show of cracking down on scams.

Chen Zhi, the China-born chair of the alleged scam empire Prince Group, was extradited to China on Jan. 7. And on the ground, droves of foreigners left suspected scam compounds last week as the police conducted raids.

There are indications that this may be more theater than a serious crackdown on a criminal industry with deep links to Cambodia’s political establishment. Reports by AFP and the Mekong Independent find that many workers left the compounds before the police arrived, suggesting a tipoff.

With the Philippines taking over as the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Robin Hu in unpacks in the South China Morning Post  how coast guards have become the key element in South China Sea tensions.

Nikkei Asia explores how many Asian countries are struggling in their pivot toward encouraging bigger families.

John Berthelsen in Asia Sentinel digs into the “ye-ye culture” scandal rocking Malaysia’s military and how decades of graft have hollowed its capacities.

Three Southeast Asian countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines—have moved to block artificial intelligence chatbot Grok over its feature that lets users create nonconsensual pornography of other people, including children.

Putting this into practice is proving challenging. VPNs, already widely used, let users get around blocks on the website. The AI tool also continues to function on X, which has not been blocked, where it is an integrated feature.

The move is interesting, though. Firstly, it highlights how—slightly unexpectedly—Southeast Asia is finding itself at forefront of democratic attempts to reign in social media.

Last year, Australia—a semi-Southeast Asian country—became the first to ban social media for children under 16. Malaysia and Indonesia are moving to implement similar laws. There is also a growing debate about the topic in the Philippines. The Singaporean government is moving forward with measures in March to force platforms to check users’ ages and restrict inappropriate content.

Second, and more speculatively, the move perhaps reflects the declining appeal of X owner Elon Musk in the region as Chinese brands outcompete him in electric vehicles. Not so long ago, a number of Southeast Asian countries were in a frenzy of competition to try to attract Tesla to set up production in their countries. Now, three once-hot competitors are banning Grok, apparently willing to bear out any souring of Musk’s disposition that this might prompt.

One could speculate that a big part of this is the meteoric rise of Chinese electric vehicle producers, a number of which have moved aggressively to set up manufacturing in the region and sell cars at much cheaper prices. I’m sure that any country would still be extremely happy to see Tesla set up a factory in its backyard, but now, it’s no longer the only game in town.