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Anticipating nice surprise from China's FM Qin on South China Sea CoC
As a variety of powers converge on the South China Sea, it is high time that ASEAN and China conclude their negotiations over the CoC to provide all countries with a basis on how to behave in the hotly disputed area.
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President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo inspects the deck of the Indonesian Navy’s KRI Imam Bonjol corvette on June 23, 2016 at the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. (AFP/Presidential Palace)
T
here are strong reasons to believe that newly appointed Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang will give his ASEAN counterparts a pleasant surprise by instructing China’s negotiators to make significant progress at this week’s meeting in Jakarta on the Code of Conduct (CoC) for the South China Sea. But ASEAN should realize that the agreement the two parties reached in 2002 can no longer serve as the basis for negotiations.
During his visit to Jakarta on Feb. 22, Qin promptly fulfilled his promise to Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi to speed up negotiations with ASEAN on the CoC, which has gone nowhere since the two sides agreed to start the talks just over two decades ago.
Indonesia will host the crucial meeting on March 8-10, to be attended by senior officials from the 10 ASEAN member states and China.
Concluding the CoC conclusion tops the agenda of Indonesia’s 2023 ASEAN chairmanship, apart from settling the prolonged crisis in Myanmar, where the military junta has continued to turn a deaf ear to international condemnation of its brutality against civilians.
The CoC is mandated by the Declaration of Conduct (DoC) agreed by ASEAN and Chinese leaders during the ASEAN Summit in 2002.
The 2002 joint statement said that China and ASEAN “reaffirm their commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia”.
The two sides also “reaffirm their respect for and commitment to the freedom of navigation in and overflight above the South China Sea as provided for by the universally recognized principles of international law”, and “to resolve their territorial and jurisdictional disputes by peaceful means, without resorting to the threat or use of force, through friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned”.
