Asean treads fine line as US-China rivalry, South China Sea loom over annual forum

The bloc made clear during the four-day summit that it did not want to be ‘stuck in the tussle between the major powers as that would affect stability in the region’

Disagreements over language surrounding the South China Sea dispute have also delayed the release of a joint communique

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Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc delivers a speech at the opening ceremony of the Asean meeting in Hanoi on Wednesday. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 11:15pm, 12 Sep 2020Updated: 6:39pm, 12 Nov 2020

Asean’s top diplomats and their international counterparts on Saturday ended four days of gruelling virtual meetings, where US-China tensions and fears of the South China Sea dispute emerging as a proxy for their rivalry cast a huge shadow over the annual proceedings.

Some 19 meetings – including Saturday’s Asean Regional Forum (ARF) – have been held in unprecedented fashion via videoconferencing since Wednesday due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Along with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (Asean) biannual summit of national leaders, the ARF is among the highlights of the bloc’s year-long meetings.

Vietnam, the current chairman of the 10-nation grouping, said on Saturday the successful conduct of the virtual meetings demonstrate member states’ “unity and solidarity” in the midst of the global health crisis.

While the attendees emphasised that cooperation over recovery from the pandemic was the biggest talking point of the gatherings, it was the participation of the superpowers in several of the meetings that gained the most attention among diplomatic commentators.

In particular, analysts have seized on acerbic remarks aired by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his US counterpart Michael Pompeo on Wednesday during a meeting of diplomats of the East Asia Summit (EAS) grouping comprising Asean and its eight key trading partners.