Japan and the Philippines have agreed to further deepen defense collaboration and discuss protecting shared military information in the face of mutual alarm over the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) increasingly aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani and his Philippine counterpart, Gilberto Teodoro, forged the agreements in a February 2025 meeting in Manila where their concern over the CCP’s actions in the disputed South China Sea and East China Sea was high on the agenda.
Japan and the Philippines are treaty Allies of the United States, and the three have been among the most vocal critics of the CCP’s assertive actions in the region, including in the contested waters.
At the opening of his meeting with Nakatani, Teodoro said the Philippines looks forward to boosting defense relations with Japan “against unilateral attempts by China and other countries to change the international order and the narrative.”
Nakatani said after the meeting that he agreed with Teodoro “to strengthen operational cooperation,” including joint and multinational defense trainings, port calls and information sharing. “We also agreed to commence discussion between defense authorities on military information protection mechanism,” Nakatani said.
The Philippines signed an agreement with the United States in 2024 to better secure the exchange of highly confidential military intelligence and technology in key weapons to allow the sale of such weaponry by the U.S. to the Philippines.
Defense leaders signed the General Security of Military Information Agreement in Manila at a time when the Philippines and the U.S. are boosting their defense engagements, including large-scale combined combat drills, largely in response to the CCP’s increasingly aggressive actions in the Indo-Pacific region.
Nakatani said that he and Teodoro “firmly concurred that the security environment surrounding us is becoming increasingly severe and that it is necessary for the two countries as strategic partners to further enhance defense cooperation and collaboration in order to maintain peace and stability in Indo-Pacific.”
Japan has had a longstanding territorial dispute with China over islands in the East China Sea. Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy ships, meanwhile, have been involved in a series of increasingly hostile confrontations in the South China Sea in the past two years.
Also high in the agenda of Nakatani and Teodoro, a copy of which was seen by The Associated Press, was the “expansion of bilateral cooperation, especially in the context of the Reciprocal Access Agreement.”
In 2024, Japan and the Philippines signed the agreement allowing the deployment of Japanese and Philippine forces for combined defense drills in each other’s territory. The Philippine Senate has ratified the agreement, and its expected ratification by Japan’s legislature would allow the agreement to take effect.
The agreement with the Philippines, which includes live-fire drills, is the first to be forged by Japan in the Indo-Pacific. Japan signed similar accords with Australia in 2022 and with the United Kingdom in 2023.
Japan has taken steps to boost its security and defensive firepower, including a counterstrike capability that breaks from the country’s postwar principle of focusing only on self-defense. The country is doubling defense spending in a five-year period to 2027 to bolster its defense power.