Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay, center, at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Vientiane, Laos, on Monday. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Southeast Asian Bloc Finds Unity on South China Sea Dispute

Asean statement doesn’t mention ruling against Beijing’s claims to strategic waters

Wall Street Journal | 25 July 2016

VIENTIANE, Laos—Southeast Asian nations rallied Monday to form a united position on the South China Sea dispute after weeks of division, but maneuvering by China kept their 10-country bloc from mentioning a legal ruling against Beijing’s sweeping claims in the strategic waters.

The outcome let both parties conclude a day of diplomatic meetings on an upbeat note, even if they remained apart on resolving a dispute that has shorn goodwill between several members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their largest trading partner.

In a joint communiqué, the Southeast Asian countries stressed the importance of international law in resolving conflicts, which diplomats said alluded to respecting the July 12 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration that struck down China’s claims to some 90% of the sea and that Beijing has rejected. Asean repeated past concerns about militarization and reclamation in the area.

Asean Secretary General Le Luong Minh called the text “a victory for Asean, in the sense that we are able to reaffirm our fundamental position, which we think will be conducive to peaceful solution of the dispute.”

China’s ally Cambodia had blocked the document to the end, raising fears of discord that have upended Asean’s consensus-based decision process in recent years over how to approach rival claims by China and several Asean members. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei are formal claimants in the dispute, while Indonesia has grown increasingly assertive against what it sees as Chinese intrusions into waters it controls.

A key turning point came when diplomats asked meeting host Laos to reach out directly to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who had said last month that he wouldn’t support a group statement in favor of the tribunal ruling brought by the Philippines against Beijing. In the end, the Philippines and Vietnam dropped a demand for mention of the ruling.

Separately, in a meeting Monday with China, Asean agreed to a statement that both parties would further work out a code of conduct in the waters that has languished for more than a decade. It called for the respect of international law, including the U.N. Law of the Sea used in the tribunal ruling, and for freedom of navigation and overflight. Both sides would refrain from inhabiting “presently uninhabited islands, reefs” and other features of the sea, the statement said. China has been building up artificial islands with facilities such as airstrips.

That statement suggests a softening of China’s initial reaction to the ruling, when it announced new long-range bomber patrols across the region and said it would never cease reclamation.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Beijing believes “a page has been turned” and that the “temperature surrounding the arbitration case should now be lowered.” But he reiterated criticism of the tribunal ruling, saying it “prescribes the wrong medicine” for resolving the South China Sea disputes and “would only do harm” to regional stability.

Mr. Wang renewed his criticism of “external interference” by outside countries. Beijing has objected to increased naval patrols in the area by the U.S. to assert freedom of navigation, a principle that several of the Southeast Asian countries have increasingly vocalized.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, also in Laos for an annual series of meetings sponsored by Asean and involving other powers with Asian interests, also met the Southeast Asian ministers. A spokesman said that “several [ministers] stressed that both parties in the Philippines-China arbitration abide by the decision and uphold international law.”

Mr. Kerry lauded the grouping for “speaking up for a rules-based international system that protects the rights of all nations, whether big or small,” according to a U.S. State Department release.

In Phnom Penh, Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan denied that Cambodia had been running interference for China. “We don’t want war between the loser and the winner,’’ he said. “What happens if the loser doesn’t want to lose? It causes war, and we don’t want that.”

Euan Graham, director of the International Policy Program at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy, said the joint communiqué was more than had been expected given Asean’s recent divisions but that the bloc would still need to address its differences.

“The problem is that while Cambodia played proxy on China’s behalf, there are others that have stayed silent: Laos, Brunei, Thailand,” Mr. Graham said. “The split runs deeper.”

Mr. Graham said the group needed to find the unity it had before the annual meetings first erupted in disarray in 2012, with Cambodia blocking consensus on a South China Sea statement a few months after China forced the Philippines out of the disputed Scarborough Shoal in a maritime showdown.

“If the Philippines had been supported by Asean in its hour of need, the arbitration case might never have happened,”’ Mr. Graham said. “Asean’s chickens are arguably coming home to roost.”