Southeast Asian leaders have expressed “serious concern” over worsening territorial disputes in the South China Sea, presenting a rare united front against an increasingly assertive Beijing.
Vietnam and the Philippines led a successful push for ASEAN to deliver a thinly veiled rebuke to China over the standoff in waters home to key shipping lanes and thought to contain huge energy reserves.
Yet a defiant Beijing said Hanoi’s efforts to enlist the support of its neighbors in the row were “doomed to fail.”
The 10-nation ASEAN, in a statement released yesterday after a summit on Sunday, called for a peaceful resolution to the maritime rows, which flared up this month after China moved an oil drilling rig into waters also claimed by Hanoi.
“We expressed serious concerns over the ongoing developments in the South China Sea,” the joint statement from the summit in Myanmar read, without explicitly pointing the finger at Beijing.
ASEAN called on all parties involved to “exercise self-restraint, not to resort to threat[s] or use of force, and to resolve disputes by peaceful means in accordance with the universally recognized principles of international law.”
Observers said the statement marked a change of tone by the regional bloc, many of whose members have close economic and political ties with China and have traditionally avoided confrontation with the Asian heavyweight.
In 2012, Cambodia caused consternation when it was ASEAN head by refusing to take Beijing to task over its assertive maritime stance.
“This is a far cry from when Cambodia was ASEAN chair,” said Southeast Asia expert Carl Thayer, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
The statement “represents a slight tightening of ASEAN’s position,” he said, adding that it suggests a rare level of “consensus” on the vexed sea rights issue.
Under Brunei’s chairmanship last year, China avoided a public rebuke from ASEAN at a major summit after offering an olive branch by calling for peace in the flashpoint region.
Beijing struck a less conciliatory tone yesterday, insisting that the contested Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), also claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and China, near the controversial oil rig, were its “inherent territory.”
“The facts show that Vietnam’s efforts to rope others into pressuring China are doomed to fail,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) told reporters in Beijing.
“We hope that the Vietnamese side will see the situation clearly, calmly face the facts and stop its disruptions of Chinese operations,” she said.
Prominent Vietnamese political commentator Nguyen Quang A described the ASEAN declaration as a “big positive” for his country.
Vietnam lobbied energetically at the meeting in Myanmar for a strong statement on the maritime issue.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III told reporters that “many leaders” at the summit had voiced concern about the South China Sea spats, which he said were a “cause for worry and concern by all parties.”
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