South China Sea Forum

[Raphael]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/world/asia/vietnam.html

HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnam’s prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, accused China on Sunday of “dangerous and serious violations” in a territorial dispute that has raised anger toward China here to the highest levels in years.

Mr. Dung’s comments, which were carried in the Vietnamese state news media, were addressed to leaders of Southeast Asian countries attending a summit meeting in Myanmar. It was his strongest statement since China towed a huge oil rig into disputed waters off the coast of Vietnam this month.

“This extremely dangerous action has been directly endangering peace, stability, security, and marine safety,” Mr. Dung was quoted as saying, adding that Vietnam had acted with “utmost restraint.”

Mr. Dung’s comments were uncharacteristically spirited for the typically anodyne meetings of the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but they failed to produce collective criticism of China. The leaders, who work by consensus, did not mention the dispute in their final statement on Sunday. Myanmar then released a statement after the meeting was over that expressed “serious concerns over the ongoing developments in the South China Sea,” but did not mention China. It called for self-restraint and the resolution of disputes by peaceful means.

The group’s refusal to weigh in appeared to be a victory for China and underlines how there does not yet appear to be a willingness or ability to address the territorial disputes in the South China Sea collectively. At least five nations claim islands in the sea, a major shipping lane and potential flash point as China becomes more assertive and hungry for resources.

Murray Hiebert, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Vietnam and the Philippines, another vocal critic of Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea, “clearly wanted something a lot stronger” out of the meeting.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, has been unable in recent years to reach a common position on the South China Sea even as China’s claims have reached more than 1,000 miles southward from the Chinese mainland. A summit meeting in Cambodia two years ago failed to produce a final statement because leaders quarreled over the issue.

China is the region’s largest trade partner, and countries like Cambodia and Laos are large recipients of its aid.

“Within Asean, you have countries that really don’t want to rock the boat,” Mr. Hiebert said. “They are playing it pretty much down the middle.”

Foreign ministers at the meeting in Myanmar issued an oblique statement on Saturday citing “serious concerns over the ongoing developments in the South China Sea,” but did not mention China by name.

Several hundred protesters demonstrated peacefully outside the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi on Sunday, and Vietnam’s authoritarian government took the rare step of permitting journalists from the state-controlled news media to cover the protest. Signs displayed slogans like “Denounce the Chinese Invasion.”

“We don’t have a problem with Chinese people or their culture, but we resent their government conspiring against us,” Nguyen Xuan Pham, a literary critic, said as the protest swelled in a public park across from the embassy and a military museum.

China towed the oil rig earlier this month to waters near the Paracel Islands, which China controls and Vietnam claims.

China’s state-controlled Xinhua news agency said Sunday that the oil rig was “completely within” China’s territorial waters. The rig is 140 miles off the coast of Vietnam, and about 17 miles from a small island claimed by both countries.

The maritime standoff with China, which has controlled the islands since 1974, has been widely discussed both in Vietnam’s state-controlled news media and on Facebook, which is very popular among the country’s urban middle class.

China is one of Vietnam’s major trading partners, and both countries have nominally socialist one-party governments. But Vietnamese officials sometimes appeal to anti-China sentiments here that are never far from the surface and rooted in a history of conflict between the countries.

The Vietnamese government is balancing a desire to appear strong against China with the fear that anti-China sentiment could unite disgruntled citizens who have festering grievances over land grabs, religious persecution and other social issues.

Protesters on Sunday presumed to be plainclothes agents occasionally shoved and yelled at other protesters, but most uniformed security personnel sat nearby and did not interfere.

Many at the protest were adamant that China remove its oil rig, known as HD-981, from the disputed waters, but some also criticized Vietnam’s handling of the dispute, saying the government should be more assertive. The Foreign Ministry has not issued any statements about the dispute on its website since Wednesday, when it held a high-profile news briefing featuring senior officials and the chief executive of PetroVietnam, the state oil and gas monopoly.

“Vietnam’s top leaders should call a news conference, and top leaders should clearly demonstrate their attitude so that the Vietnamese people can know what they are thinking,” said Lan Le, 40, a fashion designer in Hanoi. She spoke before the prime minister’s comments were published.

Tuong Vu, an expert on modern Vietnamese history and politics at the University of Oregon, said Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party was broadly divided between a conservative faction loyal to China and another that advocates systemic economic reforms and strengthened ties with the United States and other Western countries. He said there would be fierce debate within the party about how to respond to China’s action, fueled by concerns about the long-term economic and political implications of the standoff.

The pro-China faction has held the upper hand since the 1990s, Mr. Vu added, and it would prefer to negotiate a solution to the current impasse through diplomatic back channels rather than by criticizing China too directly. That is partly out of fear that further escalation would do more damage to the bilateral relationship and possibly embolden domestic criticism of the government.

“They’ll just let the issue quiet down slowly and try to gradually return to the status quo,” Mr. Vu said. “But who knows? In the next week, the protests may occur on a much larger scale, and things may take a different direction.”

Once again, VN and PH efforts to hijack ASEAN and abuse and exploit it for advancing their own geopolitical agendas has failed. ASEAN is about trade, economic integration, and mutual cooperation. It's not about exploitation.

 

[BoQ77]

china is pretending as victim of Vietnam harrash

 

[hongquan]

who also provided the basis of your entire culture, and also offered crucial assistance during your war with the USA, without which you could never grind them down

Chinese destroyed the culture of occupied countries, force people to practice Chinese culture to make people forget about the occupation and then brag as if they are helping.

Assistance during war with USA? It is just because China don't want USA win and move the battlefield to China. Note that to USA, the war is only to attack the communist system, and China is a biggest target after Russia. But before doing that, USA need to solve other smaller targets (VN, Korea) to isolate the big prey.

Another motivation of offering from China is to set a debt to VN, to easily control, and to look for support from VN in Soviet Union disputation.

And the fact that, in 1972, Mao Tzedong and USA reached an agreement that USA wouldn't attack China if China let USA to attack the North Vietnam. So, what is the point of "assistant" here?

 

[Krueger]

May 12,2014

NAYPYIDAW – Taking off from the joint statement of the foreign ministers, leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) declared yesterday that all parties to the South China Sea dispute must stop raising tensions in the area, amid China’s more aggressive actions to assert its claim.

The Naypyidaw Declaration on Realization of the ASEAN Community by 2015 said ASEAN leaders agreed to “strengthen cooperation” for the implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), “especially calling on parties to exercise self-restraint and non-use of force.”

The leaders also said parties must “refrain from taking actions that would escalate tension and to work toward an early conclusion of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea as reflected in the ASEAN’s Six-Point Principles on the South China Sea.”

They also agreed to promote and uphold the rule of law in the conduct of relations, including the peaceful resolution of disputes.

This has been the pitch of President Aquino as the Philippines went to the arbitral tribunal to peacefully settle the country’s maritime dispute with China.

Gunboat diplomacy

Some leaders spoke boldly about the need for ASEAN to unite and ensure that it would not become an insignificant force in the face of challenges.

In a press briefing at the Myanmar International Convention Center here, Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono manifested that “there should be no room for the use of gunboat diplomacy” because what should be promoted is “peaceful means of settling disputes” by following the UNCLOS and the DOC.

In international politics, gunboat diplomacy or “big stick diplomacy” in US history means having conspicuous displays of naval power to help the pursuit of foreign policy objectives, implying or constituting a direct threat of warfare, if the terms of negotiations will not be agreeable to the superior force.

In his extemporaneous remarks following his prepared statement, Yudhoyono, who was congratulated by many of his fellow heads of states as he was completing his second two-year term of office as Indonesian president, emphasized the need for ASEAN solidarity, Coloma said.

“He called on the members of ASEAN to show moral courage and he spoke after the president of Vietnam also called on ASEAN solidarity for following the rule of law,” Coloma said.

Coloma said Malaysian President Najib Razak also called for “concrete demonstration of ASEAN solidarity in terms of promoting adherence to the rule of law” and display moral strength even in the face of “daunting situations.”

“He said that this is the way by which ASEAN could project itself as a respectable and reliable organization,” Coloma added.

“We will notice that Malaysia, like the Philippines, is also involved in disputes over maritime domain in the South China Sea. We are aware that Vietnam is contesting certain actions taken against it in the South China Sea,” he said.

Coloma said Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang called for an end to the “brazen attacks” in the South China Sea and urged ASEAN to continue to work for unity and solidarity.

In the plenary session of the leaders, Coloma said several heads of state expressed support for following the rule of law and peaceful settlement of disputes, which had been the key concepts promoted by the Philippines in past meetings of ASEAN.

“We will recall that in the middle of 2012, the Foreign Minister’s Meeting failed to come up with a communiqué. But in December 2012, on the prodding of President Aquino, there was agreement that ASEAN should start fleshing out the declaration on the conduct of parties involved in the South China Sea disputes. And from then on, there has been significant progress in terms of attaining support for the positions taken by the government,” Coloma said.

Big step

Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said the foreign ministers’ statement on Saturday, even without directly mentioning China, was a significant step forward in the context of the dynamics of ASEAN.

When a similar foreign ministers meeting was held in Cambodia two years ago, they failed to come up with a joint communiqué because of an impassé over whether or not to mention the South China Sea conflict.

Coloma said it was the Vietnamese that raised the recent developments in the South China Sea, which rolled over and led to the issuance of the foreign ministers’ joint statement.

Foreign ministers expressed serious concerns and called for restraint amid China’s incursions in the South China Sea, as the grouping faced criticisms that it could not stand up for its members getting bullied by Beijing.

No more moratorium

President Aquino, for his part, pushed vigorously yesterday for the ASEAN member-countries’ full integration rather than promote the status quo amid challenges in the South China Sea, poverty in the region, disasters and climate change that could reverse economic gains.

“We call for a review of the current policy of moratorium,” Aquino said, adding they should devise ways and means for ASEAN to expand development and dialogue cooperation with other interested states, regions and multilateral organizations that were in “a position to contribute to our community-building efforts.”

The President also called anew for adherence to the rule of law without directly mentioning the territorial dispute with China.

“We stand firm in our belief – a belief shared by all – that the rule of law is key in fostering a climate of stability, one that allows our societies and our people to flourish. As such, we look forward to working with our colleagues and partners in this summit toward enhancing our engagements in promoting the rule of law,” Aquino said in his intervention during the ASEAN Summit Plenary held at the Ruby Hall of the Myanmar International Convention Center here on external relations and future directions of ASEAN as a group.

“It is only natural that ASEAN seeks to engage more of the world in its pursuit of inclusive growth and integration. Perhaps the time has come to study ways on how best to do this efficiently – for instance, in engaging with others as regional blocs, instead of as individual nations,” Aquino said.

The President expressed belief ASEAN member-countries shared the advocacy of an outward-looking grouping with a more “inclusive perspective” in relating with dialogue partners, as well as those wishing to engage with ASEAN more comprehensively and openly.

He said without doubt, ASEAN had achieved much in the past 46 years, but “much more remains to be done.”

As leaders who envision the sustained progress, peace and stability of their respective nations and of ASEAN, Aquino said they would now have to deal with the challenge of exploring all avenues that could help them realize their vision.

“An ASEAN that envisions itself to be people-centered and people-oriented must be bold in harnessing innovation and existing ties to fully develop a regional organization that is composed of a more empowered citizenry,” Aquino said.

Meanwhile, Aquino also said he was looking forward to prospects for greater economic development once ASEAN integration had taken place, which would include greater facilitation of goods, services and persons.


Asean to China: Stop raising tension at sea

 

[Rechoice]

There is good opportunity to criticize China - Vietnam's prime minister told southeast Asian leaders on Sunday that China was slandering his country and committing dangerous violations in disputed waters,

 

[dray]

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Mr. Dung’s comments were uncharacteristically spirited for the typically anodyne meetings of the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but they failed to produce collective criticism of China. The leaders, who work by consensus, did not mention the dispute in their final statement on Sunday.

The group’s refusal to weigh in appeared to be a victory for China and underlines how there does not yet appear to be a willingness or ability to address the territorial disputes in the South China Sea collectively.

Excellent.

Thank you to ASEAN.

 

[Pangu]

I still remember kids used to chase each other using plastic water pistols, ahhh, the good old times.

 

[Krueger]

• 
  
  
  • AFP
  • Published: May 12, 2014
  • 

Decision set to further stoke simmering territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

Puerto Princesa: Philippine prosecutors said on Monday they would charge nine Chinese fishermen arrested in disputed South China Sea waters with environmental crimes, despite Beijing’s warning of a dire effect on relations.

The decision, announced by prosecutors in Puerto Princesa on Palawan island, is set to further stoke the simmering territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

Prosecutor Allan Ross Rodriguez told AFP he would file charges in court later on Monday, rejecting the appeals of two Chinese diplomats who met him earlier in the day about the case.

“It is clear: there was a fishing vessel, Chinese fishermen, a catch of [protected] sea turtles. It is clear from what the apprehending officers said,” Rodriguez said, explaining the basis for his decision.

Chinese embassy officials in Manila could not be contacted for comment.

Filipino police seized the Chinese-flagged vessel and detained its 11 crew last week off disputed Half Moon Shoal.

However, two were found to be minors and would be repatriated without charges, Rodriguez said.

The remaining nine would be charged with violating laws against poaching and catching protected species.

If found guilty of collecting “rare, threatened or endangered” species, the most serious allegation, they could face up to 20 years in prison and large fines.

Poaching in Philippine waters itself is punishable by fines of up to $200,000 (Dh734,600).

Filipino police said they found a huge haul of hundreds of sea turtles — a protected species — on board the 15-tonne vessel, many of them already dead.

China has demanded that the Philippines free the fishermen immediately, saying it has “undisputable sovereignty” over the shoal.

Its foreign ministry and embassy in Manila have also urged the Philippines to “stop taking further provocative action” that would harm relations.

Rodriguez said the Philippine government has assigned lawyers to represent the crewmen after the Chinese diplomats declined to hire defence lawyers.

Half Moon Shoal is 111 kilometres (60 nautical miles) west of Palawan, the most westerly island in the Philippines. It is located on the eastern edge of the Spratlys, a chain that sits near vital sea lanes and is believed to harbour vast oil and gas resources.

China’s claim to nearly all of the South China Sea has strained its ties with Southeast Asian countries.

Last week Vietnam accused China of ramming its ships in an encounter near another disputed territory in the sea.

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes both Vietnam and the Philippines, in a statement after a weekend summit expressed “serious concern” at the maritime disputes.

China’s extensive claims also overlap those of Asean members Brunei and Malaysia, as well as Taiwan’s.

The Philippines in March filed a formal plea to the United Nations challenging Beijing’s claims, in defiance of Chinese warnings that it would seriously damage their already frayed relations.

Beijing has rejected UN arbitration and urged Manila to settle the dispute through bilateral talks instead.

Philippines to charge ‘poachers’ despite China warning | GulfNews.com

 

[cnleio]

It looks like becoming water version of Sino-Vietnam land border disputes in 1980s.

 

[丶勿谓言之不预]

In this dispute, China will be the winner. Vietnam is doomed to fail.

 

[Beast]

ASEAN countries are not interested in Vietnam and Pinoy BS. They are more interested in having more cooperation with China to help their own countries prosper. This is what I called, Good Government!

 

[Beast]

In this dispute, China will be the winner. Vietnam is doomed to fail.

I still remember an egg shall not pick a fight with a stone.

 

[BoQ77]

Time will answer ... as I check, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, PH, VN ... all directly says about danger from China act ...

 

[he-man]

china will be busy with vietnam,phillipines and japan it seems.

thank god