ASEAN Beat | Diplomacy | Southeast Asia

Laos Expected to Scuttle ASEAN’s South China Sea Code of Conduct

Sources say Vientiane is poised to replace Phnom Penh as China’s spoiler in ASEAN.

Throughout its year as chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Philippines has aggressively sought to push the China-ASEAN Code of Conduct (CoC) for the South China Sea to the top of the regional agenda and end the long and drawn out diplomatic saga, which dates back more than two decades.

The CoC is part of a long (and thus far inconclusive) quest to find peaceful resolutions to the many maritime and territorial disputes that persistently plague the sea lines of communications across a waterway that accounts for almost a quarter of world trade. A CoC would enable ASEAN to negotiate with China as a united entity, and after all that is what ASEAN is supposed to be all about: a centrist political and trade bloc that can represent the interests of 11 Southeast Asian states on the world stage through a rules based order.

It’s a process that does not suit China, which has done its best to belittle and intimidate Manila and specifically Philippine Foreign Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro, who has demanded respect for international law while juggling heated diplomatic tensions and the ASEAN chair. Publicly, Beijing maintains its policy of non-interference and at times even espouses the virtues of potentially resolving maritime issues with Southeast Asian states through ASEAN. But behind the public spotlight, China has persistently used its proxies to obstruct and scuttle the CoC.

Cambodia was particularly useful in this regard. At the 2012 ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, hosted by Phnom Penh, Prime Minister Hun Sen was signaling a significant shift in foreign policy toward China and the CoC was topping the agenda. The Philippines and Vietnam pushed to explicitly mention the ongoing Scarborough Shoal standoff and Chinese maritime encroachment in their Exclusive Economic Zones, but Hun Sen and his Foreign Minister Hor Namhong balked and declared that such disputes should be handled bilaterally.

For the first time in ASEAN history, no joint communique was issued at the end of the meeting. It was a major embarrassment for the Cambodians.

The CoC was effectively frozen, delays amid the COVID-19 pandemic followed, and whenever necessary Cambodia could be relied upon to do China’s bidding and scuttle the process.

That is what China wants; bilateral negotiations between individual states that enable it to reject international verdicts like the 2016 arbitral ruling on the South China Sea while protecting its expansive unilateral claims and military bases on artificial reefs.

China has also secured its state, military, and civilian........

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