Jamil Maidan Flores: Never Again Should Asean Kowtow to China
For a while it looked like it would happen again.
In 2012, with Cambodia as Asean chair, for the first time in the 45-year history of the regional organization, a regular ministerial meeting failed to issue a joint communiqué.
In my mind, what happened in Phnom Penh in 2012 was that ten foreign ministers sat in a room where there were also two elephants. One elephant was the discussion of the ministers on the standoff between China and the Philippines in the vicinity of the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. The standoff was the stuff of international headlines at that time, but this was not the elephant. The elephant was the candid discussion on the standoff that the foreign ministers engaged in.
The other elephant was a reference to exclusive economic zones and continental shelves. This was proposed by Vietnam.
Nine of the ten foreign ministers were amenable to acknowledging these two elephants, but the tenth, the chair himself, would have none of it — obviously out deference to a China that didn’t want any multilateral discussion on its claim to most of the South China Sea.
The ministerial meeting was therefore deadlocked on this matter. The hours passed, the deadlock hardened. Finally it was announced that there’d be no joint communiqué. It was a diplomatic coup for China at the expense of Asean.
The memory of this debacle caused some anxiety among observers during the annual Asean ministerial meeting (AMM) and post-ministerial conferences (PMC) in Kuala Lumpur last week. There was a build-up of worry when two days had passed since the conclusion of the AMM and still no joint communiqué had been issued.
Singapore’s Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam explained that the joint communiqué was still “work in progress” and that there were some difficulties with the part about the South China Sea. This wasn’t reassuring.
At the start of the week Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had told the media that multilateral forums were not the right place for discussing bilateral issues. At about the same time his deputy foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, was quoted as saying, “It [the South China Sea] should not be discussed. This is not the right forum. This is a forum for cooperation.” He was referring to the Asean-hosted conferences with dialogue partners. But in the light of the delay of the issuance of the joint communiqué and of the memory of Phnom Penh, the words of the two Chinese diplomats rang ominous.
The joint communiqué was finally issued on the last day of the meetings. To the relief of many observers sympathetic to Asean, it contained not just one but six paragraphs on the South China Sea. “We took note,” says one paragraph, “of serious concerns expressed by some ministers on the land reclamation in the South China Sea, which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions...” Observe that only some ministers expressed concern.
The last paragraph on the topic says: “The Philippines briefed the meeting on further developments including matters relating to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.” This cryptic statement was, of course, about the arbitration that the Philippines launched before a UN tribunal belaboring China’s claim to most of the South China Sea on the basis of a nine-dash line.
This obtuseness could only mean that China had a bodyguard or two within Asean who saw to it that the language of the communiqué didn’t hurt China’s delicate feelings.
The important thing, to my mind, is that there was a joint communiqué at all. That the Phnom Penh debacle of 2012 wasn’t repeated. That there’s an even chance it won’t happen again. That Asean as a whole isn’t under China’s thumb.
Jamil Maidan Flores is a Jakarta-based literary writer whose interests include philosophy and foreign policy. The views expressed here are his own. He may be contacted at jamilmaidanflores@gmail.com.
Tags: Keywords: