By Ankit Panda
After consultations in Tianjin, Chinese and ASEAN leaders appear to be no closer to a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea.
Senior officials from China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in Tianjin, China to discuss the implementation of the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and to advance progress toward a more binding Code of Conduct for the South China Sea. The meeting comes as tensions between ASEAN claimants, including the Philippines and Vietnam, and China remain high in the South China Sea, where China has spent the last 18 months carrying out an unprecedented level of artificial island-building and construction on features it occupies in the Spratly Islands. China agreed to begin discussing the Code of Conduct with ASEAN in 2013.
The Tianjin meetings, formally the Ninth Senior Officials’ Meeting on the Implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, had little to offer in the way of deliverables. Leaders did walk away with a new mechanism that could help prevent military escalation in the South China Sea: they agreed to implement a foreign ministers’ hotline specifically to handle any emergencies in the South China Sea. According to Reuters, which reported on the hotline, the mechanism will be formally announced in a joint statement after next week’s meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers.
ASEAN diplomats had varying assessments of the Tianjin talks. Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman noted that the meeting included “important progress with regard to the CoC.” “While we proceed with the implementation of the DoC and work expeditiously towards the establishment of the CoC, recent developments have raised tension and eroded trust and confidence among parties,” he added. Thai Deputy Foreign Minister Noppadon Theppitak noted that the states agreed to “maintain stability” in the South China Sea by “implementing several points achieved as a result of this meeting.” His comments likely refer to the working plan for the implementation of the Declaration on Conduct for next year.
Read the full story at The Diplomat