US Encourages ASEAN, China to Develop Rules for South China Sea

Delegates attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Finance Ministers' and Central Bank Governors' meeting in Nusa Dua on Indonesia's resort island of Bali on March 31, 2023. (SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON—The Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) efforts toward increasing peaceful cooperation with China’s communist regime over the situation in the South China Sea has the support of the Biden administration, a State Department spokesman says.

ASEAN, a political and economic bloc of nations in Southeast Asia, announced at a summit last week that the group was heartened by “ongoing efforts to strengthen cooperation between ASEAN and China” and noted efforts to craft a “code of conduct” for the South China Sea.

China and numerous ASEAN members all lay claim to overlapping portions of the waterway.

The Biden administration supports such initiatives and believes that such frameworks are an invaluable avenue for maintaining peace in the region, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said during a May 11 press briefing.

“As it relates to the South China Sea and as it relates to maritime boundaries and international delineation, we believe that there is important space for those kinds of talks to continue to have some kind of framework and rules of the road as it relates to that part of the world,” he told The Epoch Times.

He noted, however, that he was unaware of the particular announcement but didn’t clarify whether others in the administration were aware of ASEAN’s efforts before the statement was made.

ASEAN on Front Line of China Expansion

ASEAN’s relationship with the Chinese regime is sometimes a rocky road.

ASEAN members Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam all hold claims to various parts of the South China Sea, which China has systematically sought to expand its control over through the creation of artificial islands and the mass use of illegal fishing fleets.

The statement put out by the body after its summit referred to the issue euphemistically as “the situation in the South China Sea” without specifically naming China.

“Concerns were expressed by some ASEAN Member States on the land reclamations, and serious incidents in the area, including damage to the marine environment, which has eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions, and may undermine peace, security, and stability in the region,” the statement reads.

The bloc’s pursuit of peace with China on the matter appears less to do with building truly warm ties with the country and more to do with preventing the escalation of hostilities in the region, such as when a Chinese militia ship fired a military-grade laser at a Philippine coast guard ship earlier in the year.

To that end, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said he hoped ASEAN could avoid entanglement in “big power rivalries,” meaning the competition between China and the United States, according to Malaysian media outlet Astro Awani.

Regardless, China continues essentially unimpeded in its efforts to expand its access to strategic resources in the region, largely succeeding by targeting small, unaligned nations for intimidation.

For its own part, the United States maintains that communist China’s claims in the South China Sea are invalid, and experts believe that the regime’s expansionary activities are a clear violation of international law.

“All of this is clearly illegal, in contravention of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which China helped negotiate,” Greg Poling, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said last year.

“We’re getting dangerously close to the point where freedom of navigation no longer exists in the South China Sea.”