Asean makes a mess in Kunming

The case of the vanishing policy statement last week has damaged the credibility of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and represents a serious blunder on the part of Laos, currently chairing the regional bloc.

Asean and Chinese foreign ministers met in Kunming on June 13 and 14 to mark the 25th anniversary of their diplomatic partnership, but the outcome has been called “a diplomatic fiasco”, and Laos deserves much of the blame.

Discussion inevitably turned to the South China Sea, where Beijing has cited historical sovereignty over atolls and islands also claimed by Asean member-countries, primarily Vietnam and the Philippines. With China busily consolidating its disputed claims by establishing infrastructure on some of the islets and building artificial islands, and with regional negotiations going nowhere, Manila has taken the matter to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

And with that ruling imminent (which Beijing has already said it will ignore) and after years of argument, the stage was set in Kunming for some forthright debate. Observers waited for the requisite joint statement that would encapsulate the discussion and indicate whether any common ground had been found.

The statement from Asean was unusually bold, even if it didn’t mention China by name. “We expressed our serious concerns over recent and ongoing developments, which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and which may have the potential to undermine peace, security and stability in the South China Sea,” it said. Malaysia’s foreign ministry released the statement, saying the Asean Secretariat in Kuala Lumpur had approved it, only to withdraw the document a few hours later without offering a clear explanation. 

The immediate speculation was that Laos, as Asean chair, had ordered the retraction under pressure from China. Beijing denies the allegation. Phnom Penh supported the retraction. Both Cambodia and Laos rely heavily on economic assistance from Beijing. In fact the incident recalls the annual meeting of Asean foreign ministers in Phnom Penh in 2012, when the resulting joint communique contained no mention of the South China Sea dispute at all.

This time the secretariat signalled that individual member-countries could issue their own statements on the Kunming session. Vivian Balakrishnan, the foreign minister in Singapore, which coordinates Asean’s dealings with China, sought to put the debacle in a favourable light. The ministers, he said, had “called on Asean and China to continue working together to maintain the peace and stability in the South China Sea”.

No one should be appeased by such rosy spins of the facts. Laos must explain why the joint statement was retracted, if only to counter the interpretation that Southeast Asia’s much-vaunted “unity” is a sham. The bloc should be speaking with one voice in its dealings with the superpowers, not hemming and hawing individually, clearly torn by their disparate allegiances. 

Vientiane has failed in its duty as chair to diplomatically hammer out a consensus among members. Even if that task is impossible under the circumstances, it should have ensured that the joint statement accurately reflected what happened at the meeting. Admitting that Asean cannot agree on a strategy for the South China Sea might undermine confidence in the region’s politics, but honesty would bolster confidence in its ethics, and that’s enough for most foreign investors. Instead, we have lost further respect in the eyes of the international community.

The member-countries are certainly not faultless. The South China Sea crisis has to be resolved. The Asean claimant states, understandably desperate in facing a superpower virtually alone, might have to curb their self-interest if the issue is to be settled amicably. The non-claimant states, including Thailand, have to get fully behind their Southeast Asian partners or else convince them to bow to Beijing. This is a wholly Asean matter, not a “bilateral” problem to be left to individual countries. China would certainly prefer to deal with its rivals separately. Asean shouldn’t let that happen.