“One should never link the military facilities with efforts to militarize the South China Sea”, Liu said.
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China has pushed back on US objections and said that while it is building “military installations”, the facilities are to protect civilians.
Two-thirds of Australian trade passes through the South China Sea and Bishop said freedom of navigation in the area was imperative.
China, which claims nearly the entire South China Sea, has been transforming reefs in the Spratly archipelago into artificial islands and building airfields and other facilities on a few of them.
President Park Geun-hye called on China Sunday to peacefully cooperate with neighboring countries in resolving territorial disputes in the South China Sea, noting during the annual East Asia Summit (EAS) that the issue is of “grave concern” to Seoul’s global trading.
Earlier this month, US B-52 bombers flew near a few of the artificial islands being built by China in waters where it claims sovereignty.
In October, the USS Lassen, a guided-missile destroyer, sailed around one of them.
Aquino kept up a drumbeat of growing criticism of China’s expansion of tiny atolls into fully-fledged islands, as leaders including Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met in Malaysia.
Beijing continues to insist that there is no problem with freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
Washington has said the move was meant to stress the right to free passage in waters China claims, but Liu called it a “political provocation”.
Whether China would behave as a responsible power in the simmering standoff over maritime territory, is the question in this context. This elevation is embodied in a commitment by both sides, partners for nearly 40 years, to a secure, prosperous and peaceful Asia-Pacific region, they said.
ACTION PLAN: United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, left, shakes hands with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev during their meeting as part of the 27th Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday.
Further, Anifah said the ministers also reaffirmed the importance of maintaining peace, security, stability and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea, an area that has more than US$5 trillion (RM21.5 trillion) of world trade transits every year.
“It is a consistent position of China’s government to firmly oppose militarisation of the South China Sea”, he said.
Aside from terrorism, leaders from the 10-member ASEAN and from the United States, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Russia, New Zealand and Australia, also conducted extensive talks on the South China Sea disputes.
Obama on Friday said the disputed region would be a major focus of summit meetings among world leaders this weekend in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.
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Founded in 1967, ASEAN consists of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
