From the Diplomat, November 18:
A South China Sea Code of Conduct Cannot Be Built on a Foundation of Bad Faith
There’s an obvious reason CoC talks haven’t progressed: China isn’t interested.
Last month at the conclusion of talks with senior Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) officials in Beijing, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson optimistically announced that the parties had agreed to “accelerate negotiations so as to strive to reach at an early date an effective and substantive” Code of Conduct (CoC) to govern their activities in the South China Sea.
This statement came eight months after a similar proclamation at the start of 2023, and served to bookend yet another year of the diplomatic kabuki theater that surrounds these perpetual deliberations.
Just one year ago, all 10 ASEAN leaders gathered together with then-Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Phnom Penh, Cambodia to mark the 20th anniversary of the “milestone” Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DoC). There they reaffirmed “the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, the 1982 UNCLOS [U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea], the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and other universally recognized principles of international law which shall serve as the basic norms governing state-to-state relations.”
Like the initial 2002 DoC, last year’s reaffirmation was a soaring, aspirational document, filled with pledges of mutual respect, self-restraint, adherence to international law and the freedom of navigation under UNCLOS, and the peaceful resolution of disputes “without resorting to the threat or use of force.”
And yet, like the DoC itself, this reaffirmation carried with it an element of farce. Every nation gathered there in Phnom Penh knew very well that the South China Sea now exists under the persistent threat and occasional use of force. It is a place where many disputes are not resolved peacefully, but rather by the application and threat of violence by China, the Declaration’s most powerful signatory, which has set itself up as police officer, judge, jury, and jailer over all the others.
Far from respecting international laws, China has brazenly ignored and discarded both the central features of UNCLOS and the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling that clarified UNCLOS’ application the South China Sea. China has ignored the clear statements contained in UNCLOS in favor of a sweeping and unilaterally declared “indisputable sovereignty” over waters that are fairly apportioned to its neighbors.
Beijing now acts as the sole arbiter of national rights and jurisdictions, enforcing its rule by the constant presence of its naval, coast guard, and militia ships....
....MUCH MORE
As Japan's Prince Kanenaga wrote to China's Hongwu Emperor in 1382:
Heaven and earth are vast, they are not monopolized by one ruler.
The universe is great and wide, and the various countries are created each to have a share in its rule.
Now the world is the world's world; it does not belong to a single person.
—The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 5, 2012, 129–153
doi:10.1093/cjip/pos006
Advance Access publication 19 March 2012
Also pp 94:
Chinese Hegemony
Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History, 2015
