On Wednesday last week, the op-ed pages of several newspapers in Southeast Asia ran a piece by John Lee urging “key players within ASEAN to push for a code of conduct that prohibits the use of force to settle territorial disputes to cover all maritime regions in the Asia-Pacific.”
The author, according to the Hudson Institute, where he is a non-resident senior fellow, is “one of the foremost experts in… the foreign policies of states in East and Southeast Asia.”
That lofty accolade may be deserved. However, this particular article is rambling, confused, confusing and replete with non-sequiturs, factual errors and bias — in this case against China.
First, a few factual corrections. China does not claim “historic waters” in the East China Sea — as alleged by the author. Its maritime claims are not “becoming central” to the Chinese Communist Party’s political raison d’etre. “The nine-dash line” always included the Natuna (納土納) waters, although Lee and others seem to have just discovered this.
The piece is politically naive and misleading. China makes a clear political distinction between the disputes in the two seas. It views the Japanese “administration” of the islands and its maritime claims in the East China Sea as a festering sore left over from Japanese imperialism and would — if necessary — probably go to war with Japan over them.
However, China is unlikely to go to war over its island and maritime claims in the South China Sea, although, like all big powers, it will bluff, bluster, intimidate and even threaten use of force to get what it wants. That China can and will — under the “right” conditions — settle its boundaries peacefully is demonstrated by its agreements with Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin.
China’s maritime claims in the two seas are based on different principles. They are more “legitimate” in the East China Sea, ie, they are in conformity with the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Its claims in the South China Sea are unclear and ambiguous and will remain so unless and until it replaces the nine-dash line with a claim based on UNCLOS.
China has one main maritime counter-claimant in the East China Sea — Japan. In the South China Sea, there are four other claimants, not counting Taiwan. China has shrugged off so-called “diplomatic embarrassment” suggested by Lee and also partially countered it with its proposal for a treaty with ASEAN of “good neighborliness, friendship and cooperation.” The Western press has all but ignored it — but it is there to be considered.
A unified code of conduct covering both the South and East China seas would not add much value and would probably dilute its content and effectiveness. The negotiations between China and ASEAN on a code of conduct for the South China Sea are difficult enough and have made little progress on details.
The wider the area covered and the more countries involved, the less robust and “leakier” a code of conduct is likely to be. Regarding no use or threat of force, these principles are incorporated in the UN Charter, UNCLOS, the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, the ASEAN Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and presumably in China’s proposed treaty, as well as Vietnam’s proposed no first use of force pact.
However, they all are like a house of cards resting on a flimsy foundation. The problem is not a lack of agreement on what is needed, but a basic lack of trust in each others’ fundamental intentions, particularly now that the US has become involved in the disputes. In sum, Lee’s proposal is unrealistic and a canard that should not distract attention from the multiple efforts to forge a fragile peace in Asian seas.
Mark Valencia is an adjunct senior scholar in the National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Haikou, China.
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