The Philippines on Thursday issued a statement on the contentious South China Sea after a joint statement by foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) following a meeting with China was withdrawn, purportedly for revisions.
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Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, who co-chaired the meeting with Wang on Tuesday, said it demonstrates that “ASEAN and China are even able to discuss hard issues … frankly, constructively and openly”.
These points were contained in a statement issued by the ministers following the Special Asean-China Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Kunming, China.
It’s unclear why precisely the statement was retracted for amendment.
The strategic contest in the South China Sea brings together a rising China that is more assertively claiming disputed territory; a us that has long held sway over the Pacific; and five other regional governments that claim various bits of rock and reef.
Perhaps Laos should be reminded that four Asean members – Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam, are claimant states to the disputed South China Sea maritime area.
Their comments came amid China’s diplomatic blitz to discredit a coming worldwide legal ruling on territorial claims that is expected to deliver a setback for Beijing.
China does not recognise the arbitration and has reacted angrily to Manila’s legal efforts over the Beijing-controlled Scarborough Shoal, off the main Philippine island of Luzon.
Its reference to the use of “friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned”, underscores China’s insistence that bilateral negotiations are the only way forward, something critics call a transparent attempt to divide the disputants and keep the dispute off the agenda of multilateral mechanisms.
That may be an attempt to retain some credibility over its repeated evocations of the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea signed between China and the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
That may be. China, after all, is ASEAN’s largest trading partner. “This is a closed door meeting”, spokesman Lu Kang said at a briefing on Wednesday in Beijing.
This is unfortunate. It brings sharply back to mind the turmoil of the 2012 foreign ministers’ meeting in Phnom Penh, when host Cambodia heeded China’s admonitions and for the first time in its history Asean failed to issue the traditional joint statement at the end of an annual meeting.
“Clearly, China’s purported efforts to divide and conquer the region and extract the South China Sea issue from the ASEAN-China agenda hasn’t worked”, said Richard Javad Heydarian, assistant professor in worldwide affairs and political science at Manila’s De La Salle University.
But the Straits Times of Singapore reported that two of China’s closest allies in Asean had objected to the prepared statement. This bodes well for the contributions that Singapore can make as the country coordinator of ASEAN-China dialogue relations, as a relatively unified ASEAN is also a stronger ASEAN that can better engage China to discuss the management of the South China Sea disputes.
It has also chided the Asian giant in recent weeks over what it says are “unsafe” intercepts of USA spyplanes by Chinese fighter jets. “So they will probably sit down with us and say, ‘OK, can we settle this in a diplomatic manner?'”
“We emphasised the importance of non-militarisation and self-restraint in the conduct of all activities, including land reclamation, which may raise tensions in the South China Sea”, the communique said.
Timofei Bordachov, head of the Eurasian Program of the Valdai Club, says the South China Sea issue is not a question of global arbitration.
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AFP quoted the spokeswoman as saying the Asean Secretariat approved the release of the statement, then later informed the ministry it was being retracted.
