Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr challenged Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強) over recent clashes in the South China Sea at regional summit talks yesterday as fears grow that conflict could erupt in the disputed waterway.
Li met the leaders of the 10-member ASEAN at their gathering in Laos after a day of discussions dominated by the civil war in Myanmar.
There has been a spate of violent clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels in recent months in waters around disputed reefs and islands in the South China Sea.
Photo: AP
Marcos raised the issue in the meeting with Li, saying: “You cannot separate economic cooperation from political security,” a Southeast Asian diplomat who attended the meeting told reporters.
The Li summit was largely focused on trade and came the same day he met with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who said Beijing had agreed to lift sanctions on the lucrative lobster industry.
However, Marcos told the meeting that ASEAN and China cannot pretend that all is well on the economic front when there are tensions on the political front, the diplomat said.
Marcos also said both sides should hasten talks on a code of conduct in the sea.
Another ASEAN source said leaders stated their positions while Li insisted that China had to protect its sovereignty.
ASEAN leaders on Wednesday repeated longstanding calls for restraint and respect for international law in the South China Sea, according to a draft summit chairman’s statement seen by AFP.
The growing frequency and intensity of clashes in the disputed waterway are fueling fears that the situation could escalate.
“The South China Sea is a live and immediate issue, with real risks of an accident spiralling into conflict,” Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) told fellow leaders at Wednesday’s summit.
Beijing claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea, a waterway of immense strategic importance through which trillions of dollars in trade transits every year.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived yesterday to represent the US at today’s East Asia Summit, where he would back concerns about Beijing’s increasingly assertive claims in the South China Sea.
US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink has accused China of taking “escalatory and irresponsible steps designed to coerce and pressure many in the South China Sea.”
China has for years sought to expand its presence in contested areas of the South China Sea, brushing aside an international ruling that its claim to most of the waterway has no legal basis.
It has built artificial islands armed with missile systems and runways for fighter jets, and deployed vessels that the Philippines says harass its ships and block its fishers.
The East Asia Summit would put Blinken in the same room as Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov, but the pair are not expected to hold one-on-one talks, with Washington believing Moscow is insincere in its calls for peace talks on Ukraine.
Yesterday’s diplomatic round also saw new Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba hold his first face-to-face meetings with Li and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol.
Ishiba and Yoon joined Li for talks with the bloc leaders in the annual “ASEAN Plus Three” format.
Li used his opening remarks to warn of the danger of “attempts to introduce bloc confrontation and geopolitical conflicts into Asia” — a coded swipe at Ishiba’s past calls for a regional military alliance along the lines of NATO.
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