A week before the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi conducted a working visit to Manila to prepare for the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Some observers described the development as a sign of possible thawing in icy Filipino-Sino relations, considering an international arbitration court recently ruled that it had jurisdiction to hear the arbitration case Manila filed last year against Beijing over the maritime landgrab.
Also notable were President Xi’s remarks during the Apec CEO’s Summit, where he called on member-nations to “spare no effort to foster an environment of peace conducive to development and to never allow anything to disrupt the Asia-Pacific development process.”
The Chinese leader’s statements hew close to what analysts have described as Beijing’s attempts at softening its global image and reassuring its immediate neighbors that its rise is peaceful and thus should not cause any anxiety.
However, the best reassurance that Beijing could give—especially to smaller players like the Philippines—would be to demonstrate on the ground its adherence to the rules-based regime of current international law, where might is not right.
Over the weekend, at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit and the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur, President Aquino pressed for China to do just that—calling on Beijing to take the lead in ensuring the enactment of a legally binding Code of Conduct in the South China Sea.
China had, in fact, already taken a lead role in concluding an aspect of such rules-based behavior—one which an Angara Center for Law and Economics panel had recommended in a December 2013 conference on resolving the maritime disputes in the China Sea.
That agreement refers to the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES), approved last year by the navies of 21 Pacific states including the Philippines, during the 14th Western Pacific Naval Symposium held in Qingdao, China. Reports have since emerged of US and Chinese ships maneuvering around each other in accordance with the CUES—indicating some de-escalation in the tensions.
In response to repeated calls from the US and the Philippines for China to stop the militarization and reclamation in the disputed waters, Chinese officials have one way or another said that the two countries shouldn’t stir up troubles in an otherwise peaceful region. But maritime peace and regional stability would be enhanced and assured, if China were a better, law-abiding neighbor.
E-mail: angara.ed@gmail.com.