Cooperation on the South China Sea

Update: On Tuesday, Asean nations called for a halt to expanding reefs into artificial islands in the South China Sea.

A major threat to stability in Asia today is the competing claims of countries that border the South China Sea. It is an urgent issue that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, a regional group, needs to discuss at its annual meetings this week. Yet China, which will attend the meetings as a guest, is insisting that the topic not be raised.

“This is not the right forum. This is a forum for promoting cooperation,” China’s vice foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, said on Monday. That rigid, bullying attitude is at the heart of what’s wrong with China’s approach to the South China Sea, which is rich in fish and oil and gas resources as well as the route for $5 trillion in annual ship-borne trade.

China insists it has rights to over 90 percent of the strategic waterway despite the fact that Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have also staked claims. Since the 1950s, most of them have tried to reinforce their claims by establishing outposts and in some cases stationing troops on islets and rocks in the South China Sea. But none has moved so aggressively as China, which transformed reefs into substantial artificial islands.

The result has been rising tensions and increasingly frequent incidents in which China’s coastal defense forces and fishermen from neighboring countries have faced off on the high seas. Many countries have become so concerned about China’s aggression that they have begun to build bigger militaries and engage in more military exercises with the United States and with each other.

China would prefer to deal with each of the claimants individually rather than as a group because that would ensure Beijing has the upper hand. Previous efforts to resolve the contested claims diplomatically have failed. Even if the claimants cannot soon resolve which states have legitimate claims to which rocks, Asean can serve an important function in airing concerns and enabling the smaller states to forge a unified position.

The United States, which will also attend Asean as a guest, has called for all states to stop expanding the reefs, a reasonable position for Asean to endorse. Rather than waiting for China to help write a code of conduct for managing South China Sea disputes, Asean should draft its own code and challenge China to accept it. The Asean nations are more likely to be heard and have an effect if they can find a way to cooperate and speak with one voice.
