Navigating tensions in South China Sea

Barry Wain, For The Straits Times

A RECENT upbeat statement by China and Vietnam, pledging to settle their conflicting maritime claims peacefully, is being hailed as a sign of progress that will help lower tensions in the South China Sea.

Realistically speaking, it is an indirect admission of failure. In 16 years of bilateral negotiations, the two countries have not been able to hold a single, substantive meeting to discuss their claims to sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly islands.

The fundamental reason is that they cannot agree on an agenda. China, which kicked the Vietnamese out of the Paracels in 1974 in the dying days of the Vietnam war, does not accept that Vietnam has a legitimate claim to the archipelago and refuses to discuss the subject.

Their agreement last month was simply on 'basic principles' to govern their negotiations, which actually began in 1995. Beijing and Hanoi began the talks after establishing, a year earlier, a regular consultation mechanism with the goal of resolving the dispute.

China and Vietnam have been attempting to settle their land and sea boundaries since the early 1990s, when their relations improved following a decade of hostility, including a Beijing-initiated border war.

In 1992, they reached a general agreement on the basic principles to be applied in settling the disputes relating to the land border and the Gulf of Tonkin. The 1,287km land border was agreed in 1999, though the demarcation - implanting pillars in the ground - was not completed until early 2002. Agreement on how to divide the Gulf of Tonkin followed soon after, coming into force in 2004.

Although the only remaining boundary issue between China and Vietnam, the South China Sea was always going to be more challenging. It is complicated by claims to parts of the Spratlys by three other South-east Asian countries - the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei - as well as Taiwan.

Despite the absence of regular progress reports, it was obvious the consultation mechanism set up by China and Vietnam went nowhere for years. According to Vietnamese officials, Beijing refused to discuss the sovereignty of the Paracels because it has full possession of them. It was prepared to consider the sovereignty of the Spratlys, since Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines share armed outposts in the atolls alongside China.

In 2004, China and Vietnam announced an agreement not to take any action that could complicate or enlarge the South China Sea issue, and not to resort to the threat or use of force, including the use of force against fishing boats. As they continued to intone ritually their commitment to a peaceful resolution, it emerged this year that they were focused on what Vietnam's Deputy Foreign Minister Ho Xuan Son called 'guiding principles' for a solution to the dispute.

After seven rounds of talks, Vietnamese media reported in August that the two sides had reached 'preliminary consensus'. Consensus apparently was achieved a few weeks ago. Details of the 'agreement on basic principles guiding the settlement of sea issues' were included in a lengthy joint statement issued at the end of Vietnamese Communist Party boss Nguyen Phu Trong's visit to China from Oct 11 to 15.

Mr Ho Xuan Son and Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun signed the agreement itself.

They vowed to 'firmly speed up negotiations' and 'make exerted efforts to seriously implement this agreement', as the joint statement put it.

While repeating the standard declarations eschewing violence, China and Vietnam promised to 'maintain a cool-headed and restrained attitude'. It is an interesting formulation, given Beijing's recent belligerence in the South China Sea, including cutting the seismic cables of Vietnamese survey vessels inside the country's exclusive economic zone.

Keen to show its friendly face, China has touted the agreement as evidence of progress in the South China Sea. As the official Xinhua news agency put it, 'both sides speak highly of the agreement' and believe it 'will guide the settlement of maritime issues between the two countries'.

Within a week, Hanoi was forced to deny foreign news reports that the agreement meant the two countries were withdrawing from the 2002 Asean-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and would, instead, address South China Sea issues bilaterally. A Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman reiterated Hanoi's stand that disputes involving two countries would be solved bilaterally, while other disputes would be discussed by 'all concerned countries'.

Only a super-optimist would expect China and Vietnam to make headway on sovereignty issues any time soon. They admitted as much in their joint statement, when they agreed to explore a host of 'interim and temporary measures', including cooperation in oil and gas exploration and exploitation.

In reality, joint development is a long-proclaimed Chinese policy that has proved elusive, mainly because Beijing has not clarified its claims in the South China Sea, and there is no consensus on areas in dispute that may be subject to joint development arrangements.

What the statement called 'basic and long-term solutions' are obviously still on the back burner.

The writer is writer-in-residence at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.