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China skips Shangri-La Dialogue for second year as Vietnam warns of three cascading global crises
Defence ministers from around the world have gathered in Singapore for the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, with US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth set to be the highest-profile speaker. China has declined to send its Defence Minister for the second consecutive year, while Vietnam's president set a grim tone warning of crises in development, international order and strategic trust.
Singapore is once again playing host to the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's most closely watched annual gathering of defence ministers and senior military officials. The conference has drawn delegations from across the globe, with United States Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth expected to deliver the most anticipated address of the event. His presence underscores Washington's commitment to maintaining its security profile in the Indo-Pacific region at a time of heightened geopolitical tension.
For the second consecutive year, Beijing has chosen not to send its Defence Minister to Singapore, a conspicuous absence that limits the forum's potential as a venue for meaningful great-power dialogue. While China has dispatched a delegation drawn from a military academic institution, the lack of a senior political decision-maker means there will be no opportunity for direct high-level exchanges between American and Chinese defence leaders on the sidelines of the conference.
Vietnam's president set a sobering tone in his keynote address on the opening evening, outlining what he described as three intersecting crises bearing down on the global community. The first, a crisis in development, has seen traditional economic models buckle under the weight of climate change and shifting supply chains. The second involves a fracturing of the rules-based international order, with established multilateral structures showing signs of erosion under the pressure of competing national interests.
The third and most dangerous crisis identified by the Vietnamese leader was a collapse of strategic trust between great powers, which has cascading effects on smaller nations forced to navigate an increasingly polarised landscape. Without naming specific countries, the president alluded to military operations that have caused substantial economic harm across Southeast Asia and to territorial behaviour in the South China Sea that disregards international legal rulings, a clear reference to the ongoing disputes in the region.
The speech amounted to a plea from a middle power caught between two giants, urging both Washington and Beijing to exercise greater restraint in their competition and to stop pressuring smaller nations into making binary choices between the two sides. For countries like Vietnam, which maintains complex relationships with both the United States and China, the current environment presents an exceptionally difficult diplomatic balancing act with few easy answers on the horizon.