Delhi angers Beijing over South China Sea; tensions thwart Asean defence

Plans for a ceremonial joint statement at the end of a Southeast Asian regional defense forum were dropped on Wednesday after differences between China and the United States (US) over the mention of disputes in the South China Sea in the document.

Last week the USA gave a practical demonstration of its policy, sailing the USS Lassen guided missile destroyer within 12 nautical miles of at least one of the land formations China claims in the disputed Spratly Islands.

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.

Those concerns, Carter said, were discussed yesterday at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers’ Meeting – Plus in Malaysia’s capital city, Kuala Lumpur.

Satellite images show Beijing was constructing several runways to accommodate military aircraft in South China Sea islands, though territorial disputes on these islands remain.

The United States and China navies are sabre rattling in the South China Sea over disputed waters around island reefs.

“It reflects the divide China’s [land] reclamation and militarization in the South China Sea has caused in the region”, the official said.

Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan also met his U.S. counterpart Ashton Carter on the sidelines.

Chang said the South China Sea issue concerns China’s core interests.

Japan and China’s defense ministers agreed Wednesday on the need to quickly set up a maritime communications link to prevent accidental collisions of fighter planes and warships belonging to the two nations. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has in the past been critical of China’s actions in the waterway.

He said: “To get 18 defence ministers to agree on everything all the time is probably not a true reflection of world affairs”.

China claims most of the potentially energy-rich region in its entirety, asserting its “historic rights” to the South China Sea’s maritime resources.

The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the sea.

It said a consensus had been reached with ASEAN countries on the wording but that “individual countries outside the region” – an apparent reference to the United States – attempted to “forcefully add” new wording.

“But certain other countries disregarded this existing common understanding, attempting to force and insert content unrelated to this summit’s discussion into the joint declaration, completely straying from the Asean defence meeting mechanism’s aims and principles”, it said. “As we can see that overall situation in the SCS is stable and there has never been any problem about freedom of navigation and over flights in the SCS”, she said.