WITH a strategic partnership identified as integral for China and Asean to counter external geopolitical impulses and promote regional peace, the New Inclusive Asia Dialogue (NIAD) 2021 raised a key point: Is there consensus between the East Asian power and South-East Asian nations making up the regional bloc on how to work together and what impacts to counter?
Assoc Prof Dr Kuik Cheng-Chwee believes there is no consensus between the stakeholders, which complicates the effort.
“There is no consensus even among Asean members, let alone with China. This is not just because of one or two different voices within Asean, but we are seeing a very complex Asean-China relationship,” said the head of the Centre for Asian Studies at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.
He noted there is also a lack of clarity about China’s intentions, with the country making several counterintuitive moves recently in the region.
“From 2016 onwards, China actually has been quite lucky to have some very friendly governments that are more than ready to accommodate it and work with it, but I think China’s actual actions have not really been helpful in reciprocating the good gesture or coming up with some arrangements that are good for everybody,” he said.
He pointed to the recent incident of China’s fighter jets encroaching into Malaysia’s airspace at the time the two countries were celebrating the 47th anniversary of their bilateral relations.
“If China is sincere about promoting bilateral relations, it would not have committed these kind of actions,” he said.
Agreeing that each Asean state has its own interests, Dr Rommel Banlaoi shared that for the Philip-pines it’s all about balancing its relationship with the United States and China.
“In the Philippines, we’re trying to get the best of both worlds instead of getting in the middle between the two big powers,” said Dr Banlaoi, who is the chairman of the board of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research.
“China is the provider of our development assistance while the United States is the provider of our security assistance. But at the same time, we will not be surprised if the Philippines is now reinventing its security alliance with the United States. The United States cannot provide all our economic needs, you know, even during the pandemic period. And China is trying to fulfil that aspect,” he said.
Gilang Kembara, a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, said that while there is no love lost between Jakarta and Beijing, when it comes to a strategic partnership, when it comes to geopolitical dynamics, Indonesia is also trying to balance itself between the West and China.
“And this is reflected to an extent in the latest comments made by our government downplaying the recent encroachment of a Chinese vessel in the Natuna Sea,” he noted.Gilang strongly believes that Asean can play an important role in bringing China to the international table for dialogue in the region.
“The Western powers have this idea that we can’t really handle issues with China on our own, and that they have the excuse to barge in and clean up whatever ‘mess’ they think we are in.
“So I think we can somehow show to them that for certain issues, for instance, the Mekong issue (involving water management), we can bring China to the table and work it out together.”
The question remains: Can China and Asean work together to counter the impact of Aukus, the new Australia, United Kingdom, United States pact?
Dr Ma Bo, of Nanjing University’s Collaborative Innovation Center of South China Sea Studies, believes that Asean is a high priority in China’s neighbourhood diplomacy.
In fact, he added, it appears that China is willing to negotiate with Asean on the bloc’s own version of regional security architecture.
“I think Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s remarks at the recent symposium to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of dialogue relations between China and Asean indicated that. I want to quote his remarks: ‘China understands Asean’s original intention to put forward its own outlook and vision on regional architecture, and is ready to explore concrete cooperation with Asean in areas of consensus.’
“I think this is a very good indication that he endorsed for Asean to come up with its own version of the Indo-Pacific strategy.”
On the economic side, China and Asean cooperation is already going well: “The latest data shows that Asean has become China’s largest trading partner since 2021.
“Obviously, the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea (currently being developed by Asean) will probably speed up in this political climate. From my research, I found China really has the desire to further develop relations with Asean.”
As for the US perspective, Sourabh Gupta, senior fellow of the Institute for China-America studies in Washington, said in the event that Asean and China do come to a consensus in terms of their perspective on Aukus, the US reaction would depend on the specific terms of the agreement between China and Asean.
“If it was a kind of a general political statement, the United States can certainly live with that. It won’t be happy, but the United States can live with it.”
However, he stressed that Asean would need to find ways to cooperate with China on specific Aukus issues: “Although the pact does not engage the core interest of Asean per se, it is happening in the bloc’s geographical space,” he stressed.
Assoc Prof Kuik concurred, adding that, crucially, Asean countries would need to come to an agreement on the values, norms and principles of their approach towards Aukus.
“If we don’t do it together, we’ll be hanging separately. So I think in addition to what has been put on paper, there is an urgency and also the necessity to go beyond that.
“And it’s time, I think, to bring back the 1971 Kuala Lumpur declaration on the Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality, or Zopfan.”
He believes there Zopfan is misunderstood, especially by “outsiders” who think that the declaration is a “naive playing on the part of Asean countries to eliminate big power rivalry from the region”.
“This is a misunderstanding. I don’t think anyone in South-East Asia, either back in the 1970s, or right now, will be so naive as to think that great power rivalry can be eliminated from the region. But we do need to mitigate the power tussle here. We are already in the big hole of a big power rivalry, so we should stop digging ourselves in further,” he said.
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