Earlier this month a U.N.-backed tribunal found there was no legal basis for China’s claims to most of the strategic and resource-rich seas – a ruling rejected as “waste paper” by Beijing.
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Ahead of the series of events under the banner of the 49th annual ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) in Laos, Indonesia has announced it will move beyond the issue of overlapping claims in the South China Sea and instead promote confidence-building measures that will ensure long-term regional peace and stability. Current U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates indicate that there are 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves beneath the South China Sea, more than the reserves of Mexico, control of which China does not appear to be willing to cede to its neighbor, despite the verdict of the U.N. Permanent Court of Arbitration. Yi has described the Hague case as a farce, and Beijing says the ruling has no bearing on its rights in the sea.
Lu said Taiwan is the one to suffer amid a wrestling match between China and the United States over South China Sea issues, quoting an African proverb: “When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers”.
Cambodia is China’s closest ASEAN ally and is the only country opposing any reference to the ruling in a statement due to be issued after ASEAN foreign ministers meet on Sunday, an ASEAN diplomat told Reuters.
Laos is hosting the gathering of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which traditionally ends with a joint statement.
While Beijing’s initial fury was widely foreseen, the controversy essentially disappeared from Chinese state media on Friday, a possible indication that China is preparing to tone it down. Last week, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen announced China would give his government around $600 million in soft loans.
“But really, all around Asia, China is increasingly a trade partner, and so what China is doing with its checkbook, with its diplomacy, is really trying to create friends and partners through its investments”, he said. “It is blocking any phrase about the arbitration and about militarization”. His visit to Laos received wider coverage as Laos is the Chair of ASEAN in 2016 and is expected to play a critical role in this year.
The meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers in Laos may signal whether the Philippines will stick with a low-key and non-confrontational approach despite its rejection of China’s condition for talks.
“Our house is in a mess”, he said. “We don’t have the luxury as the world’s leading power to devote our attention to one region and ignore another”, she said. “We want to save ASEAN and be unified again”. While a United States diplomatic team, led by U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, negotiates with the Beijing government over the recent territorial decree from The Hague, a U.S. Navy task force is exercising freedom-of-navigation patrols in the area, near Chinese-held islands and under the specter of a rare public display of new, long-range missiles by the Chinese government and a call by Chinese military leaders for their armed forces to be combat-ready.
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Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang called on the party to “stop their groundless accusations against China and interference in China’s domestic affairs”, in a statement carried by the official Xinhua news agency.
