A New ASEAN-China ‘Deal’ on the South China Sea?

On July 25, reports surfaced that China and ASEAN had reached a new “deal” or agreement on resolving the South China Sea disputes as part of a series of ASEAN-led meetings held in the Lao capital of Vientiane. In fact, while both sides have been looking to boost their ties following the July 12 arbitral tribunal ruling, the joint statement that they inked is far from the breakthrough that they are advertising. It is more indicative of their desire to improve ties.

Several media accounts cited that both sides had reached agreement on a “separate joint statement,” which included implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) initially signed back in 2002.

Officials on both sides were also more than happy to acknowledge the positive turn in relations. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that a “new page” had been turned in ASEAN-China relations with the agreement.

Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan of Singapore, which is currently ASEAN’s country coordinator for China, was also bullish on the agreement. With the agreement on the joint statement, Balakrishnan wrote on Facebook that ASEAN and China had “press[ed] the reset button” and that relations could be “back onto a more positive trajectory.”

“This will help to safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea,” he added.

In fact, the agreement is far from the breakthrough both sides are emphasizing. Indeed, the separate joint statement that is being referred to, seen by The Diplomat, is essentially just a two-page reaffirmation of the commitment of both sides to the full and effective implementation of the DOC.

The statement’s five perambulatory clauses and six operative clauses restate some of the parts of the DOC, including resolving disputes through peaceful means, exercising self-restraint, and undertaking cooperative activities. Indeed, some parts of the joint statement are lifted directly from the DOC. For instance, operative clause three, which urges both parties to “refrain from action of inhabiting on the presently uninhabited” features, reported as a new development by the media, is hardly new and was agreed to under the DOC.

If indeed this statement says little that is new and merely reaffirms what ASEAN and China agreed nearly a decade and a half ago, why are both sides touting this as a boost for ties?

The answer lies less in the substance of what was agreed and more in the symbolic need for ASEAN and China to signal the beginning of a new phase in bilateral cooperation following the July 12 arbitral tribunal decision. With this year being the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-China relations, the two sides are looking to make progress on new collaborative ventures following a cooling off period after the ruling.

Much of the progress being made in ASEAN-China relations is unsurprisingly in the economic realm. China is ASEAN’s largest trading partner, and Beijing has proposed a range of new initiatives, including a production capacity cooperation agreement, the new Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Framework, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and One Belt, One Road (OBOR).

The promise of ASEAN-China relations is not only economic, however. For example, on the security side, China has been pushing for greater antiterrorism cooperation with Southeast Asian countries in terms of intelligence sharing and exercises as well as more military-to-military collaboration in border and coastal defense, and maritime security.

Realizing that the South China Sea issue has been severely impacting political trust, the two sides have also been looking at how to address this within the ASEAN-China relationship. Even ahead of the ruling, China and ASEAN reached agreement on several confidence-building measures, including establishing a hotline among their foreign ministries and implementing the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) in the South China Sea.

But a perennial frustration of ASEAN has been China’s foot-dragging on the progress toward a binding code of conduct (COC) on the South China Sea. Beijing continues to insist on the full implementation of the DOC before progress on the COC can occur. Southeast Asian countries have viewed this as a delaying tactic.

That’s where the importance of the much-ballyhooed joint statement comes in. The statement, one ASEAN official told The Diplomat, “is a symbol of China’s commitment to what they’ve said,” indicating an ASEAN attempt to see how serious Beijing is about moving forward with the DOC and COC. Though the official admitted that much of the document was a restatement of DOC principles, he also said that this was only part of a set of confidence-building measures that both sides have agreed to.

Beyond this statement, ASEAN officials have also been urging for increasing the frequency of senior officials meetings and joint working group meetings on the implementation of the DOC. Language on this was initially included in the statement that ASEAN countries were about to issue at the ASEAN-China Special Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Yuxi, which was scrapped at the last minute after a withdrawal by a couple of countries. The next round of DOC-related meetings will be held in China in August.

Although both sides are keen to demonstrate that they are making progress on the South China Sea issue so they can fully realize the potential of ASEAN-China relations in other areas, there does not yet seem to be enough reason for optimism. The release of the two-page joint statement on the DOC merely restates China’s old position that it wants to see full implementation on the DOC before moving to the COC. Indeed, parsing the language of operative clause six, the call for “the eventual attainment of this objective,” is even weaker than in some previous ASEAN statements, which call for a “speedy” conclusion of the COC.

Rhetoric aside, several other Chinese actions toward Southeast Asian states over the South China Sea issue do not really inspire much confidence. For instance, China’s very public thanking of Cambodia for its role in wrecking the ASEAN consensus on including any mention of the ruling in its joint statement – an “impartial” view in Beijing’s determination, which warranted $600 million in new aid to support election infrastructure, education, and health – was seen as a continued effort by China to divide the regional grouping.

It was yet another clear demonstration of the difficulty both sides will have in building confidence on the South China Sea issue in practice, all in spite of their preferred desire to do so in order to reap the benefits in other areas of the ASEAN-China relationship.