South China Sea | No joint declaration at ASEAN defense meet amid rising China tensions

China’s Defense Minister Chang Wanquan, right, sits before the start of the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus in Kuala Lumpur

Divisions within Asia over China’s claims in the disputed South China Sea spilled over yesterday to a meeting of U.S. and Asian defense ministers, where China insisted the group make no public mention of the strategic waters in a joint declaration intended as a public display of unity.
As a result, a joint statement was canceled, said Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, reflecting a split with China and perhaps other Asian nations over citing the South China Sea issue.
“What we sign on the joint declaration is not going to resolve the issue of duplicating claims nor is it going to wish vessels that are in the South China Sea away,” Hishammuddin told a news conference while trying to downplay the dispute at the meeting. “To dwell on the joint declaration is not going to solve the real problem. Our concerns are more real … unintended accidents at the high sea, which can spiral into something worse and that we must avoid.”
Hishammuddin said that the Southeast Asian grouping will continue to engage China and the U.S. to ensure peace and stability in the region.
Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said that the dispute over the joint declaration was due to “differences in phrasing and interpretation.” But he said “all countries agreed on the freedom of navigation and all countries accepted international laws and norms.”
In a statement issued by the host country, Malaysia said the meeting noted the importance of the early conclusion of the code of conduct in the South China Sea — a set of rules meant to govern behavior in the disputed waters — “in order to build mutual trust and confidence, and maintain peace, security and stability in the region.” China has so far dragged its feet in concluding discussions on the code of conduct.
A senior American official traveling with Defense Secretary Ash Carter said that China, which like the United States is not a member of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations but was attending the defense ministers’ meeting as an invited partner, was adamant that the meeting’s final public statement omit any mention of the South China Sea. The Americans argued that it would be better to make no joint statement at all rather than issue one that omitted mention of the contentious South China Sea issue.
Carter was expected to hold a news conference later yesterday.
He also plans to go aboard the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt today as it transits the South China Sea off the Malaysian coast, a senior U.S. Official said. Carter plans to bring his Malaysian counterpart with him, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the plan and so spoke on condition of anonymity.
China’s claims in the South China Sea are disputed by several countries in the region, including Malaysia.
It was not clear what Carter or other attendees wanted the meeting’s final public statement to say about the South China Sea, which is a highly trafficked waterway with longstanding territorial disputes.
Carter met with his Chinese counterpart, Chang Wanquan on Tuesday evening, and U.S. officials said afterward that Chang repeated the Chinese government’s earlier criticism of U.S. naval movements in the South China Sea. They said he called the U.S. actions provocative and illegal, but they also said the exchanges between Carter and Chang were cordial.
The U.S. officials who briefed reporters on the dispute about mentioning the South China Sea in the group’s final statement said that it reflected divisions in the region created by China’s reclamation of coral reefs and other land formations in the waterway.
The U.S. asserts that China is militarizing these formations, but Chinese President Xi Jinping told President Barack Obama at the White House in September that China has no such intentions. Robert Burns and Eileen Ng, Kuala Lumpur, AP