A meeting with ASEAN has made little progress on resolving maritime
disputes in the South China Sea.
It
passed with barely a word. A two-day meet in Bali this week was supposed to
improve relations between China and the 10 members of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It was touted widely in the Chinese-friendly
press but in the end not even the sycophantic scribes of Beijing had much to
say.
Senior
officials were meeting on the Indonesian island as part of a
joint working group to thrash out a common approach to resolving maritime
disputes in the South China Sea – known as the East Sea in Vietnam and the West
Philippine Sea in Manila.
But
Beijing’s stance ahead of the meeting probably did not help the 11th ASEAN/China meet, which was meant to make some inroads on
the much-vaunted Code of Conduct (CoC), first raised in 2002, and the
Declaration on the Conduct of Parties (DoC) in the South China Sea.
“China
has strictly adhered to the principle of the DoC and has exercised great
restraint when facing provocation from other countries such as the Philippines
and Vietnam,” Zhang Junshe, vice president of the Naval Research Institute,
said ahead of the meet.
“We
hope these two countries will stop the provocative actions against China.”
China’s
take it or leave it approach to its territorial ambitions has hardened since it
foisted an ancient claim on the United Nations five years ago through its nine-dash line, which ignores international maritime law,
modern conventions, and recognition of sovereign borders.
It’s a
policy, regurgitated ad nauseam by Communist Party wonks, that leaves no space
for negotiations while challenging the rights of countries to unfettered access
over their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), which are delineated 200 nautical
miles off their coasts.
Vietnam and the Philippines have been on the front
lines of the dispute with their long-held claims over the Paracel and Spratly
Islands. Chinese claims also encroaches onto territory viewed widely as
belonging to Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.
Such
attitudes have again put the Vietnamese and Chinese militaries on full alert
after Beijing said it woulddeploy another four oil drilling rigs in the South
China Sea off Hainan and Guangdong provinces, described by Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, as “normal activities.”
This
came with the region still on tenterhooks after both countries clashed on the
high seas in late May following the deployment of a rig into the Paracel Islands. Riots ensued while talks between Chinese state councilor Yang Jiechi and
Phan Binh Minh, the Vietnamese deputy foreign minister, which ended in Hanoi on
June 19, failed to ease tensions.
Five
days later Vietnam claimed seven Chinese vessels had rammed one of its boats,
badly damaging the hull, a claim rejected by Beijing, with Hua accusing the Vietnamese
of breaching a security cordon.
If the
additional rigs venture further south towards the Paracel Islands and again
head inside Vietnam’s EEZ then further hostilities are probable.
In behaving more like a 16th century colonial power as
opposed to a nation that sees itself on par with the United States, Beijing has
asserted a claim over 90 percent of the seas that divide China, mainland
Southeast Asia, and the rest of ASEAN, through which about half of the world’s
trade passes.
Its
assertion is non-negotiable, rendering any notion of a CoC, or the more juvenile
DoC, hardly worth the airfares in getting the delegations to Bali. Perhaps it’s
time to scrap talks all together, at least until China adopts a more realistic
approach befitting of a genuine world power in the 21st century.
Luke
Hunt
Luke
Hunt can be followed on Twitter @lukeanthonyhunt
Business & Investment Opportunities
Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd (SBC) is incorporated
in Singapore since 1994.
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