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South China Sea: China-Asean code of conduct unlikely by end of the year, experts say
- A Chinese military adviser had earlier said that Beijing and Asean countries could not agree on several contentious issues, including the role of other powers
- The US, Japan, Australia and British navies have increased their presence in the Indo-Pacific region
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The China-Asean code of conduct for the disputed South China Sea is unlikely to be concluded by the end of this year, according to a panel of Southeast Asian experts at a forum on Wednesday.
Their comments follow remarks from a Chinese military adviser in late December who said that China and Asean remained divided on a number of contentious issues. These, said Yao Yunzhu, a retired People’s Liberation Army major general, included whether the agreement should be legally binding, its geographic and maritime activities scope and the role of extra-regional powers.
Hoo Tiang Boon, associate professor and coordinator of the China programme at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies said that substantive progress on the code aimed at managing tensions in the South China Sea is unlikely even by the end of 2023.
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While some might hold Cambodia, this year’s chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and even the ongoing pandemic responsible for the lack of progress, Hoo said that many questions remain unanswered.
“[For example], what is going to be the enforcement mechanism … and the dispute resolution mechanism? What if parties are perceived as breaking the code, what happens next? These are inconvenient questions that I don’t think have been addressed as a whole in the discussions,” Hoo noted.
It is better not to have any code at all than to have a bad code
“It is better not to have any code at all than to have a bad code,” Hoo said, adding that the latter could end up constraining the options of Southeast Asian countries. Hoo added that a “free for all” situation might occur if any one of the parties violated the code.
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