Southeast Asian leaders yesterday pressed their call for self-restraint in the disputed South China Sea and renewed their alarm over the US-China trade dispute, with one leader saying it might spiral out of control.
Long-raging territorial conflicts and the protracted trade dispute are high on the agenda in the final two days of meetings of ASEAN leaders.
Facing regional predicaments, such as the Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar, the leaders took the stage in Bangkok and clasped their hands together in a trademark ASEAN handshake to project unity.
Photo: EPA-EFE
This year’s host, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, opened the summit with a call for regional unity and a push for the bloc to conclude a massive free-trade pact with China and five other Asia-Pacific nations to cushion any impact from the US’ trade conflicts with China.
“The winds of protectionism that are battering the multilateral system remind us that we must hang on ever stronger to one another,” Prayuth said.
The US is not included in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which Prayuth said would encompass the world’s largest free-trade region.
Officials from Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam are to be at the G20 summit later this month in Japan, where US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) are expected to meet.
“ASEAN hopes there will be discussions that lead to an easing and resolution of these problems, because they affect many countries,” Prayuth said.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday told other leaders that the trade conflict “is creating uncertainty. It is taking a toll on global growth and it could hinder the ongoing processes of economic integration.”
“The US and China must both take the high road and resolve their differences before the situation spirals out of control,” Duterte said.
In their public communiques, the leaders have avoided naming the US, China or specific nations embroiled in controversial issues in a show of their conservative protocols, but the leaders could raise thorny issues in a closed-door and informal session.
Duterte has said that he would raise the territorial conflicts in the South China Sea following the June 9 ramming of an anchored Philippine boat by a larger Chinese fishing vessel in the disputed Reed Bank (Lile Bank, 禮樂灘).
In a statement outlining their regional policies, the leaders yesterday renewed their call for nations involved in the territorial spats to “exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities and avoid actions that may further complicate the situation, and pursue the peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international law.”
Four ASEAN states — the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei — along with Taiwan and China are locked in disputes over the strategic waterway.
ASEAN has been in talks with China to negotiate a nonaggression pact called the “code of conduct” to prevent major armed clashes in the region.
Southeast Asian diplomats have told reporters that the first of three rounds of talks on the proposed pact was expected to be completed this year.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
RSS