South China Sea Conference, Session Two

welcome to csis online the way we bring you events is changing but we'll still present live analysis and award-winning digital media from our drakopolis ideas lab all on your time live or on demand this is csis online all right well good morning everybody uh it looks like the panelists are all trickling in our participants rather all trickling in and good evening for those on the other side of the pacific thank you for joining us for the second of our four-part south china sea conference this year uh like last year covet has forced us to move what would normally be a big one-day party in washington to a multi-month series of webinars so this second session is focused on the legal landscape in the south china sea and potential political and legal options for dispute management and we have a great series of panelists i'm going to turn to in a minute first a little housekeeping so today we are using the webinar function on zoom so when we get to q a i would ask the audience to go ahead and type in any questions they have to the q a function and i will read them out to the panelists when you type in your quest if you could identify your your name and your organization that's always helpful for the speakers to know who they're addressing everything said today is going to be on the record the events being recorded so if you can't catch all of it it'll end up on both csis.org and youtube in a couple of days and the event today is made possible by the generous support of the foundation for ec studies in vietnam and the governments of japan new zealand and australia as well as general support to csis i think that's all my housekeeping and so with that let me introduce our first speaker and we'll get this thing underway so first we're going to hear from maria pia benoza pia is a research associate at the center for international law within the national university of singapore and before that she was most recently a law reform specialist at the university of the philippines law centers institute for maritime affairs and law of the sea and with that uh pia let me turn the mic over to you please thank you very much greg for the kind introduction and of course to csis for inviting me to participate in this dialogue with such distinguished panel members i find it quite remarkable that 11th edition since the inception of the south china sea conference in 2011. some of the issues that confound us are still very much the same and i think greg you touched upon that with the previous panel from the first session uh of course today there is a little bit of more clarity legal clarity on some issues owing to the final award of the unclass annex seven tribunal in the south china sea arbitration uh indeed five years ago following the conclusion of those proceedings there was much speculation on how states that do not participate in such adjudicative interstate processes do actually strive to work towards some form of compliance eventually in adherence to the rule of law and without conceding points that they lost the opportunity to argue against because of such non-participation clearly however this is still not the case in the south china sea while it is a positive development that the philippines and china have since continued to move forward with bilateral initiatives the impression of the philippines as having already conceded to many of china's demands for pittance is not lost on filipinos and international observers alike and has served to cast out on the independent foreign policy that philippine diplomats work so hard to implement interestingly much of the legal and diplomatic debate at least for most of 2020 and 2021 has been unfolding in the most unlikely of fora that is in the legal processes before the commission on the limits of the continental shelf the clcs since malaysia's december 2019 deposit of a partial submission on an extended continental shelf claim in the south china sea to the clcs close to 30 communications have been made to the u.n secretary general not only by asean claimant states statements by indonesia australia japan the united states the united kingdom france germany and new zealand overwhelmingly echoed the findings of the arbitral tribunal especially on the lack of legal basis in unclas for china's claim of historic rights the improper drawing of straight or archipelagic baselines around clean features by a continental state and the importance of upholding high seas freedoms in shared ocean spaces this is a positive development in keeping philippine games in the arbitration alive despite the defending party's non-participation on the other hand china consistently asserts the illegality and nullity of the award and its extensive historical practice supporting claims of historic rights it also alludes to a long-established practice and international law uh related to continental states outlying archipelagos i'm personally curious and puzzled as to how long this legal argumentation can be kept up and how long beijing seeks to isolate itself from a rules-based order consistent with one clause furthermore given that the new submission before the clcs is likely to not make progress limited as it is by the commission's scientific character and internal rules and all of the objections that have since been submitted i would not be so surprised if this torrent of diplomatic exchange would actually serve to foreshadow new dispute settlement proceedings at the instance of other interested states however on a related note uh the subsisting diversions of asean claimant states on unresolved maritime and territorial issues as among themselves probably does not bode well either for prospects of a truly united asean position china also continues to admonish non-regional states against using unclas as a political tool especially underscoring that the u.s should not be refereeing the implementation of the unkos and that non-claimant states should respect the joint efforts in consultation and negotiations by china and asean states with regard to such joint efforts including for example the 2018 philippines china mou on oil and gas cooperation philippine officials report that talks are still in progress before actual projects can be undertaken as i am not privy to any details on how that is moving forward i would limit myself to underscoring the importance of the fine print when entering into such cooperative arrangements and i think precisely this is already why the vision of that 2018 mou is stalled if we are to be truly faithful to the arbitral award there are not a lot of maritime areas that the philippines can compromise on i think i have already spoken too much but if i may just conclude with three other brief points that ought to be considered relating to the developments since session one of this conference series i would be very quick and uh this is of course besides the fact that president duterte announced his intent to run for the vice presidency in 2022 just earlier today uh so so uh in late july the philippine supreme court made public its decision from march 2021 uh in the pangalina and versus case on the validity of the philippines withdrawal from the rome statute of the international criminal court the decision dismissed to consolidate consolidated petitions for mootness and in the process affirmed the president's extensive authority in the conduct of foreign affairs and prerogative of unilateral withdrawal from treaties except in cases of extensive legislative participation under in their undertaking or implementation this is an important development as it came at the heels of the supposed abbreviation of the u.s philippines visiting forces agreement which was thankfully cancelled but we can already imagine what other implications there may be for philippine policies in the west philippine sea in the future in relation there too since session 1 the entire world also witnessed the heartbreaking developments unfolding in afghanistan naturally internet pundits did not lose the opportunity to comment on the effectiveness of the us as an ally and drew parallels on what this could mean for southeast asia one meme i came across even said that afghanistan today shows how the us will treat its allies tomorrow well i think that's a little unfair and i think the topic deserves obsession of its own but it's definitely a question that will also keep coming up especially as the philippines and the us enter a new stage in the handling of their alliance finally i wish to highlight pressing environmental concerns arising from increasing chinese chinese presence in the south china sea it wasn't too long ago that reports came out on the alleged dumping of thousands of pounds of human waste in the south china sea found through satellite imagery in areas where chinese vessels engaged in swarming campaigns or more the arbitral tribunal earlier found that china failed in its treaty to protect and preserve the marine environment under the cause among others owing to its failure to prevent its flag vessels from harvesting endangered species at several features of course all these have been denied and better evidence of the same may be harder to obtain given supposed law enforcement activity in the relevant areas but i think it really does underscore the fact that the environmental toll of the disputes is quite high and that is a much greater cause of concern owing to the connectivities of maritime areas in the indo-pacific and the frightening realities that all states now have to contend with when sea level rise and the impending climate apocalypse sorry for the word but it is what it is so i'll stop there and i look forward to the questions later thank you thank you very much way to start us off and i think um a fair assessment of the scale of the challenges that we're presented with let me turn now to our second speaker ian's story ian is a senior fellow with the institute for south east asia studies used to be shock institute in singapore and the editor of contemporary southeast asia prior to joining ics in singapore he was an associate professor at the asia pacific center for security studies in honolulu and an assistant professor at deakin university in australia hi ian thanks very much greg and it's uh great to be back again at the annual csis conference on the south china sea even if it's only virtually hopefully we'll all be able to meet up again in person in washington next year so i've been asked to talk for a few minutes on where we're at at the asean china code of conduct in the south b or coc process so let me start by recapping very quickly what's happened over the past few years although the two sides had agreed to a code of conduct um in 2002 it really wasn't until 2014 that negotiation started in earnest and in august 2017 three years later the parties agreed on a framework to guide future negotiations that's a one and a half page um it was 2018 the angled draft negotiating text or the sdtn which basically included what each of the 11 parties wanted to see in the final agreements there was a lot of agreement in that document so as i was saying vietnam it included a list of activities that they want the coc to ban like building artificial islands militarizing this dispute harassing military forces on on the sea and in the air et cetera et cetera basically the kind of activities that china has been undertaking over the past decade and more to in order to press its claims china included two very controversial provisions in the sdtn one that was aimed at limiting cooperation between southeast asian energy companies and their foreign counterparts and the other that would basically give china veto over military exercises between southeast asian countries and foreign countries that were not a party to the crc then in november 2018 china suggested a deadline of 2021 for the talks to be completed in august 2019 asean and chinese officials agreed on a first draft or a first reading as they call it that's basically the single draft negotiating text plus comments from all the other parties on what's what the other parties have suggested plus some consolidation of the document moving overlapping that kind of thing frankly speaking there's not a lot of difference between the single draft negotiating text and the first reading and most importantly the problematic provisions that i just mentioned are still in that document then covet 19 came along and in in early 2020 and the process was suspended the two sides did not meet at all to discuss code of conduct not even virtually because it was deemed too sensitive to do it online in earlier this year however they did begin to meet virtually they've met the two sides have met around six times um and in june of this year the foreign ministers of asean and china met in person in china and agreed to expedite the talks to make up for lost time in august just uh just a few weeks ago foreign revealed that the two sides had provisionally agreed on a preamble to the code of conduct but we don't know what that is they're keeping all of this under wraps several meetings are planned for later this year but it's clear that china's self-imposed deadline 2021 will not be met this year it was always unrealistic anyway or as the aseans politely called it aspirational so as the two sides move forward with the second reading they will have some very difficult issues to resolve these include but are not limited to the asean states will want to ensure that the code of conduct does not legitimize china's claims and in doing so undermine unclos or constrain the rules of extra regional powers and give china a veto over commercial and military activities in the south china sea they need to agree on a comprehensive list of do's and don'ts to prevent tension generating incidents from occurring they need to establish an effective conflict management mechanisms to de-escalate pensions when they do occur they need to decide whether the code of conduct will be legally binding or not and they need to establish the precise geographical scope of the code or instead use a more expansive definition of the south china sea reaching consensus on these and other issues is going to be time-consuming and certainly from time to time fractious as both sides work hard to ensure that their claims and interests are not compromised in the discussions therefore i don't think we should expect the code of conduct to be finalized until well maybe 2022 but i think perhaps more realistically 2023 and in the meantime periodic tensions will continue to occur as u.s china relations continue to deteriorate and china continues to push its claims in south china sea and i'll stop there thank you ian uh okay now we will turn to dr yen yen um dr yanyan is director of the research center for ocean's law and policy at the national institute for south china sea studies in hico and also the vice director of the south china sea probing initiative uh the floor is yours hi um thank you greg and thank you for inviting me to this conference well uh it's me the the previous speakers makes me feel that um china is the everything to blame in the south china sea and uh i i would like to say the first that i think the overall situation in the south china sea is actually quite stable i think it's actually better than last year than than 2020. so um i shall start with the uh with some positive developments in the south china sea and then i'll go through some crises that have already mentioned or some haven't been mentioned by the two speakers well from the positive side i think that there are this uh bilateral efforts as well as multilateral efforts like the coc ian just mentioned has been pushed forward well from the bilateral uh effort uh perspective i think china and vietnam's relations has has been improved since um since uh this year since uh mr uh nan has uh becoming the new the president of the uh becoming the president of vietnam i think this uh the working group meetings have been continued and i think that uh the uh the idea would be a working uh working group meeting of the uh maritime cooperation has been uh pushed forward there are some progress there and between china and the philippines i think the bilateral uh mechanism of the south china sea issue has been continued also um this may we have the six meetings uh this year and also multilateral level the uh the crc negotiation restarted uh in chongqing it's a face-to-face conference conference so these are those um positive uh developments in the south china sea so i think that uh basically things are uh being stable in the south china sea although uh we do see that there are crisis there i won't neglect that i i i do admit that there are crises in the south china sea as well as usual i think the biggest issue the biggest uh uh issue crisis is the is that the competition over resources like fisheries resources and oil and gas resources among coastal states is intensified i think all coastal states expand maritime jurisdiction through uh maritime law enforcement agencies and all those activities has been intensified um although you you've been talking about china china china and everything about china but i do want to remind you that there are serious incidents happen in the last two years in the past two years for example i choose in 2009 and in february if i remember correctly um there is this very uh serious incident between indonesia law enforcement um agency the navy and the vietnamese fishing vessel and uh i think i think some of the vietnamese fishermen has been uh has been in the water and has been detained by the indonesian law enforcement agency and also in the year 2020 in august there's a serious incident between malaysia and vietnam which called vietnamese fishermen die last year so i think these are the things that's really happening in the south china sea and not involve the chinese side so i don't think that china is the everything to blame in the south china sea when such serious incidents happen in the uh in the in the waters and finally i would like to talk a little bit about united states because uh it seems to me that uh it's it's it's it's it's hard to neglect uh unit uh united states involvement in the south china sea i think the biden's administration uh you know continues its policy in of the south china sea and it's no longer neutral uh neutral among of the south china sea issue i think that uh the us has been strengthening its military deployment even during the pandemic um you've been sending more and more surveillance warships surveillance warships airplanes and you know to the waters and the air near china and also you uh the united states started to impose sanctions on 24 chinese companies last year and that's a new move so i think that the us will continue to uh presence in the region uh especially with the uh with the quad uh and also finally i like to say that many of the news that involves china are actually fake news for example the uh uh pierre just said about this uh chinese spoke dumping sewage you know news that has already been proven a fake news at least this uh uh this this uh this accusation of china uh uh dumping the sewage in the waters are based from this uh remote sensing pictures and also the uh the similarity company when they the picture that they post online it's actually a picture of the great carrier great barrier reef of australia back in 2014 and that's that's not what china has been doing you know you know you know uh in the south china sea so that's uh i don't think that's uh something that's what china should be taking responsibility off so that's basically uh what i want to talk about and about maybe china's uh attitudes and policies towards the arbitration award i think it's already been very clear so i won't take too much time elaborating more here so uh maybe that's that's what i want to talk about today we can save some time for a q a session thank you thank you all right we're going to open up the q a so go ahead and uh get your questions in again please identify yourselves and your organization and if the question is directed at one of the speakers let me know which one uh i do want to know just on onion's point out of fairness i mean similarity got a lot of flack for that report and in fairness to them they did publish a clarification and a follow-up report in which they claim that the picture of the boat at the great barrier reef was clearly only for illustrative purposes and their report and it was the philippine press outlet that misreported it not them uh for what it's worth uh now while the q a fills in i'd like to maybe throw one um question out to each of the speakers and give the audience a little time so uh ian you mentioned that you think maybe 2023 or or i guess on an outside shot 2022 for a code of conduct but you had a pretty long laundry list of issues that still have to be addressed so if there is a code of conduct in 2022 or 2023 is it actually going to address all those issues do you think that it's it's going to do what the you know press thinks it's going to do i i think that's you're right there is a lot of very difficult issues to negotiate and maybe i'm even being optimistic by saying 2023 i i think i had my notes maybe 2024 or 2025. um i think that the danger is the dangers always been with the code of conduct discussions is that they will water down all the provisions so that it is largely symbolic and that it doesn't have much impact on reducing tensions um in the south china sea that's that's the danger either or it's either that or one or more of the parties refuses to sign it and then they compromise and it's it's a it's a consensus document that's frankly rather weak thanks um p.a you alluded to this in your remarks but there's a presidential election um coming up it's almost time for the the deadline for registration for candidates in the philippines how significant do you think shifts in philippine legal and political policy are likely to be by next july i think over the last five years of the duterte administration there has been a lot of awareness in the public sphere on how impacted the philippine public life is by all of these dealings with uh with china with the us uh the proxy uh the proxy situation uh over the west philippine sea so i think unlike the previous elections where it didn't it wasn't a it wasn't a deal breaker wasn't so much of a deal breaker for the elections i think this coming elections it will be it would matter uh it would matter a little bit more thanks um and yeah one of the uh questions always floating around is the extent of china's actual claims in the south china sea and at the moment we're seeing chinese coast guard vessels uh operating around the tuna block off off indonesia which is at the southernmost limits of the nine dash line are we getting any closer to a consensus within beijing that can be shared with the international community on what exactly the full extent of chinese maritime claims are in the south china sea that can then be negotiated i think china's claim in south china sea has has been consistent and the the latest announcement or the statement of the government is actually uh in 2016 july the 12th i think i think the that's the most official statement of the chinese government um well i think that china has been making territorial claims to the entire spradley islands encompassing both the archipelago and all other components of spin uh and and that has been consistent so i personally don't think that there's any room for china to compromise on the on the claims um however i do think that uh of all these uh efforts that china has been made uh be it uh bilateral or multilateral we're seeking uh to uh promote maritime cooperation for crisis management and confidence building before the final settlement of the dispute and that's its chinese policy to safeguard the peace and stability in the south china sea thanks all right so uh we have now the q a filling up so let me turn over to the audience the first question we got was from paul here with the center for national interest here in washington paul asked uh to i suppose any of the the participants whether or not you think that any claimant would be receptive to the principle of uti posidentas which would be that all parties agree to settle the outposts that they currently possess that that the current status of occupation is what the final i suppose resolution of territorial disputes should look like um and whether or not that's a viable solution to the territorial disputes anybody want to jump on that one i can probably start um i think that would be a very very hard to accept uh state of affairs if we were to to to go by this principle um it would essentially invalidate all the gains that have been made in the orbital award uh it it it would validate actions that exceed what is uh what is the correct interpretation or application of the un clause so uh it's it's uh i know it's a happy solution but it's uh it's hard to accept and it might not uh it might not not be a just solution to the disputes yeah a quick clarification there would it be acceptable if mischief reef were removed from the equation so if it were would the philippines accept chinese occupation of these six other islands or outposts that china occupies that were not invalidated by the award well i'm not in a position to to say anything about what would be acceptable or not to the philippines but um i'm not sure um i think the island building has been so expansive uh and um to limit it to just a settlement on that uh on one feature is not uh it's not enough yan yan do you have any thoughts on this um i think that's actually a practical way of settle the dispute but i don't think that any of the clem states will accept that because like uh for vietnam it occupies uh the 29 features in the south china sea and all those features are very um [Music] are the best ones i i suppose in the south china sea's features so um nobody will give up or uh give up their maritime claims um especially when those features are the territories um in the waters in the uh in the in the south china sea that everyone relies on to make maritime claims so i don't think that any of the clinton states would accept this solution my personal view thanks ian did you want to weigh in i'm i'm gonna go a little differently uh i wouldn't rule it out altogether uh for instance a few years ago prime minister mahathir of malaysia said that while we occupy these five or six features um where we're satisfied with that we're not claiming anything else um so from his perspective it's like okay we keep we hang on to these and we don't want anything else uh brunei is hard to say because they haven't really said what they're claiming um then it gets more difficult with the the others philippines vietnam and i think especially china china is not going to compromise its claims by agreeing to allow the countries that presently occupy those features to continue to do so um but it would be a i think as the other two speakers have indicated a pragmatic solution to the dispute unfortunately over the years the various claimants have really dug in their heels and that's made compromises like this much harder to achieve than they would have been 20 years ago thank you uh yeah i think the next one is going to be for you this is from larry monaco with the center for asia pacific strategy um who said now that the philippines and china have entered into an agreement uh which i i assume he means 2018 mou on oil and gas joint development do you think this will hinder the ability to challenge china on its illegal moves in the south china sea so you address this a little bit but maybe you could just elaborate on where you think the status of the 2018 mou is and what it means for the philippines right thank you very much for the question uh i don't think it's uh it's something that will actually hinder the ability to challenge uh illegal actions in the south china sea because when countries typically enter into these agreements um it is without they they make the precise provision that it would be without prejudice to uh territorial claims or uh further progress on on maritime delimitation so so i think so long as the fine print is uh it's quite clear uh even though regrettably in some situations the political uh how it translates politically might not be uh might not be as strict as how it was intended to be when legally worded i think as as long as we are we are clear on what our red lines are uh we are clear that um what we are doing is um in implementation of an award that is valid for international law that's what uh that's what really matters thanks pia uh yen yeah i'll give you the next one um oh do you want to address that one as well please yes maybe just a few sentences because i do see a a progress on that mou if you are if he if he is the question is mentioning about a 2018 china philippines uh joint cooperation on oil and gas exploration in south china sea i think that that is not actually i want to clarify that that is not an mou on joint development it is an mou on oil and gas exploration and cooperation so that's different it both it includes uh both the uh joint development in the disputed waters but also the oil and gas exploration cooperation and the undisputed waters so far china and the philippines have already established two committees the government level committee and also the private sector working group so that both two uh committees and working groups are working um even during the pandemic and also i think that uh it's my personal view that we should better start with the service contract um i don't remember it's uh 72 or 57. i think it's 50 service contract 57 which is in the undisputed waters in the uh north um of the philippines uh mainland i think that uh i think that that will be a good start for a cooperation in the undisputed waters oil and gas operation so i look forward to the future development of this thanks um let me stick with both pia and yanyon then because we have a couple questions about the pca award that i think are best directed your way so jack shanahan at north carolina state university asked is there any evidence that despite officially ignoring the 2016 award china's leaders are beginning to acknowledge the importance of the international law i assume he means captured therein and the china is is adjusting accordingly i think is is the point and ralph romulus randoza similarly asked uh whether or not yin yang could clarify the official stance of the chinese government on the pca ruling so i guess suppose if either of you want to address do you think that the ruling has de facto had any effect on china's behavior or claims even if china insists of course that it's not going to recognize it whoever wants to jump in okay maybe okay maybe i start because uh i don't want to talk too much about this chinese official uh position because i just wanted to elaborate a little bit about my personal uh observation on this ruling i think that in fact uh from a chinese scholar's perspective i think the tribunal has made a series of mistakes regarding the jurisdiction a municipal admin admissibility and the determination nature and actual contents of the disputes and uh because well first of all under the under this uh pretext of the inter interpreting and applying the uh their own clause actually most almost every step of way that has violated the spirit and principle of the young clause and uh and also undermined the authority and integrity of the international maritime law system uh just give you just maybe one uh one one example that china has never laid any separate maritime entitlement on such uh maritime features in the south china sea such as the second thomas shaw mr three for james store and all of which are uh natural uh terrain in of the south china sea the spratly's islands and i think the the philippines deliberately separate those maritime features and wrap it into disputes over interpretation and application of the on clause uh which um janami thing is actually abuse of the right of action so um that's uh that's what china thinks about the uh the uh my personal uh thinks about the arbitral award and things that it is uh actually uh not uh uh the tribunal also misunderstood china's claims in the waters as well and uh the philippines the the dispute actually is between the china and the philippines was about the status and the individual islands of reeves and their uh maritime entitlements and china's refusal to accept or recognize this arbitrational award is actually gesturing the commitment to uh preserving international law especially the unclass that's my answer to your question thank you do you think the arbitral awards had any impact yeah maybe i would refer actually to some of the things that yanian said earlier uh which are you know with in relation to the progress that has been made in terms of having more dialogue as among the claimant states between china and vietnam china and the philippines i think that it has some impact i think uh earlier in my in my discussion i alluded to to observations previously that in one way or another states that do not participate in legal proceedings do do do seek compliance at some point along the way uh i i think that we're still a far cry from that uh but i think the the dialogues are a start uh china has also been making headway in a lot of environmental initiatives uh relating to to biodiversity in the south china sea i cannot name any specifically now from from from my immediate uh recall but but i think that uh they do have some areas there are some areas where they are exhibiting leadership uh on the basis of uh of principles consistent with with unclass and and the award thank you uh ian i'm gonna ask you to to address this question from uh khan lay on vice president kamala harris's remarks yesterday which i think she also reiterated in in the speech today on u.s commitment to work with allies and partners around the indo-pacific to uphold international rules based order and freedom of navigation uh included in the south china sea what do you make of that how does that resonate in the region and i suppose is it the right message so i think the i think you know the the baiden administration uh its policy on south china sea is is not so different from its predecessor um it has criticized china's nine dash line claims and called them unlawful and violation of clause it has criticized china for harassment of oil and gas ships in the eez of coastal states and it's calls for free and unimpeded um uh trade and freedom of navigation in south china sea uh these are all messages that are well received in uh in the region particularly by the maritime states um i think they are they've been pleased that the us has emphasized more on their maritime rights in their essays than on freedom of navigation particularly of military vessels transiting through the 12 nautical mile limit so message is good um of course the concern in this part of the world is um this deteriorating relationship between the us and china and the negative fallout for countries in the region should that competition become more confrontational these states in the region have made it quite clear that they don't want to be forced to choose sides um they don't want to be used as stalking horses by either country um i i certainly think the us has got that message we heard it uh from um royd austin when he was in singapore last month and also from kamala harris this month but um obviously china is is um disagrees with this and um as we've heard today in accusations that the us is really stirring up trouble in the region and using countries as proxies i don't i don't think that regional states see it that way thank you ian uh pia we have a question from mac paula who's a former assistant secretary with the department of environment and natural resources in the philippines who asked uh if you could speak to the incident earlier this year involving reportedly over 200 chinese ships parked at woodson reef what triggered the strong philippine response to that deployment and what has happened since right i think we have events like this every now and then and in the literature in general this has been part of the so-called swarming tactics or gray zone strategies that china has been employing in this disputed region uh and so i think what what uh what actually uh triggered uh a harder response in that in that situation was the fact that this has been happening for for quite a while and um i i myself was quite surprised that the philippines was suddenly taking such a hard line at that moment and i i do support that it was finally stepping up uh even though you know there are other considerations like philippines china vaccine diplomacy uh and and the the other things that were happening around that time i think uh what what happened uh after that was that the tensions were generally diffused but reports and we will see it in in many of the philippines reports on its having filed diplomatic notes that these incidents would happen time and time again maybe not in a scale of 220 vessels at any one time but but it's it's pretty there's there's a regularity to these actions that are uh arguably all in support of of claims of uh administration of these areas uh in the south china sea thanks did you want to address what we saw within reef how does china view and defend this deployment well i don't think i have more to say only that chinese uh the foreign ministry spokesman have been talking about it like a million times that chinese fishing boats were sheltering from wind um in their traditional fishing ground and then um they all left when the wind doesn't came you know weather broadcast sometimes just don't forecast very uh accurately so i don't you know if you see it from the outcome i don't think that china is making any special different moves than usual and nothing serious really happened there so i don't think yeah the accusation just makes sense let me stay with you and ask a question from sharon sitai from brunei who asked we have witnessed a lot of china civilian vessels the china coast guard survey vessels and fishermen who have entered other claimants easies to disrupt oil and gas activities over the last two years how does china defend this given that this is within coastal states eas yes thank you i think the question the fundamental issue of the question is that the nature of the waters of the south china sea i think the question defines the waters as to of the claimant states eez but i think that the nature is actually at disputed waters they are disputed um if you want to talk about itself the philippines is easy we're nice easy malaysia is easy can you just tell me where their claimed easy boundary is i really don't think you can well actually nobody can well just uh make uh take uh malaysia as an example malaysia has claimed the south china sea since the 1970s and they have the map of territorial sea and continental shelf also they have this uh in the 80s they have this uh easy proclamation however malaysia never claimed um never uh publicized its uh its uh territorial baseline and also the boundary of its eez so i really don't know where their claim easy is boundary is also if you take the example of this west capella incident last year last last august i think it involved those china vietnam law enforcement vessels as well as the malaysia law enforcement vessels i think those areas those waters are disputed by china vietnam and malaysia so can you say who's easy that is even if you don't recognize chinese claim in the south china sea it's still the spirit of waters between malaysia and vietnam and so is the philippines so how can you define those waters as somebody some countries easy it's just very not very objective they are disputed waters so countries uh tend to do what they think is right to defend their maritime rights and maritime rights in those disputed waters i think that's normal practice and i think that china's coast guard as well as his surveillance ships has already exercised very high level of self-restraint and of those serious incidents that i mentioned earlier none of them are exercises by the chinese coast guard so that's my answer to the question you know let me push you a little bit on a follow-up here so it you said earlier that when it comes to oil and gas exploration off the philippines sc-72 which covers reed bank should be considered disputed waters sc 57 closer to palawan shouldn't be considered disputed waters what is the definition from china's perspective of what counts as a disputed oil and gas field and what isn't is it based on the nine dash line is it based on 200 miles from all the islands which would include sc 57 how are southeast asian states supposed to know what is and isn't disputed waters well that's my personal explanation of the disputed waters as i said i really don't know where the exact boundary of the disputed water is like i said i really don't know where malaysia's claimed easy boundary is and i really don't know about vietnam as well so i cannot give you a proposed boundary of all not um on available northern part of the the the northern part of the palong it's just far from these this beauty waters in the south in the middle of the south china sea so i think uh nowhere near the uh nine dash line which is not the basis of the south of china's uh maritime claim i think that china's maritime claim i made very clear just now that it's the uh the the statement of the 2016 july the 12th so uh that's my my answer all right uh ian let me give you the next question uh from catharina coldinova who said is there any understanding now on how southeast asian states will react or have reacted to china's desire to have points in the coc uh to try to restrict the activity of third parties including energy exploration and military activity thanks uh thanks for that question it's um the two provisions that i mentioned one of which uh china seeks to restrict a development of oil and gas resources in the south china sea to southeast asian companies and to chinese companies and the second provision that um [Music] only the 11 parties can conduct military exercises in the south china sea and if one of them wants to conduct a military exercise with another country a non-party they need the prior consent of all 11 parties uh i think that the majority if not all of the asean states will absolutely reject this provision as a an attempt to restrict their strategic autonomy their commercial interests and also it undermines gun class as well so um my it's it's it's curious to know why china put these provisions into the single draft negotiating text when they must know that southeast asian countries would um object and try to have them removed perhaps it's just a negotiating tactic that china revenge will say okay we'll take these out um and as long as you give us something else but if if they do remain in the final agreement then i don't think the code of conduct will have any credibility and i don't think any outside party would um would recognize it but to get to your question that none of the countries have officially made any statements on uh on that provision but i do know just speaking to diplomats in the region um that they they don't like it at all and they won't accept it thanks i we have nine minutes and 20 questions in q a so there's no way we're getting through these and i apologize in advance let's try to do the best we can um aleister scarf with bank of america asked if anybody on the panel could game out how oil and gas exploration may take place in the south china sea given the persistent harassment of both claimant foreign vessels over the last couple of years so we've addressed this a little bit but i mean maybe i could start with you given your skepticism about the 2018 mou if if that's not it and code of conduct's a while down the road how does oil and gas exploration happen in the meantime well it's not so much a general skepticism i do acknowledge uh the practical side of this that the philippines and china will have to keep working together to move forward on several of the issues that divide them so um i think in so far as the philippine uh the philippine government has communicated that they are still in talks uh and uh yonyan already alluded to some of the of the of the potential areas although of course i i i beg to disagree with some of the comments made earlier that uh we sly and disputed areas because um we do have again we do have the findings in the arbitral award um i think it would very much depend on how uh on how the administration would want to leave a legacy uh now that it's in entering its final it's it's in its final year uh of administering the philippine government uh and well i i just said earlier that maybe there is a chance that we will be under another duterte administration uh and after 2022 so that the consideration there uh the consideration of that fact very much affects how the philippine government will deliver in this remaining period um i agree it would be very very difficult to implement oil exploration and exploitation activities uh i don't have an answer but i hope that a better clarity on the applicable rules would be would be of help especially on the rules on the use of force how much uh what exactly are within the balance of law enforcement for any of the claimant states uh with jurisdiction over the relevant area uh yeah i don't have a definite answer for that but those are some considerations thank you greg thanks i we have a question from uh i'm sorry and would you like to address this as well just just yes just two three sentence well i think that actually i'm not talking about joint development i'm talking about the clinton states already doing oil and gas explorations in the south china sea for many years for example like vietnam they have more than 100 oil rigs in the in the waters in the south china sea and also like malaysia has been uh benefiting a lot for the past 20 years and also some u.s oil and gas companies like this um ex-mobile corporation and they have this uh cooperation project with vietnam's petrol vietnam and these uh in this blue whale project uh also uh the u.s canonical phillips cooperated with malaysia and brunei uh to conduct oil and gas in the in the south china sea so i think that this unilateral uh oil and gas exploration has been continued and have been doing it for uh for for the past decades it's it's continued to it will continue to be be there yes thanks uh saturday baga santoso de daba university asked whether consensus is still the best method to resolve the south china sea issue i think maybe ian since you focused on the code of conduct and you know consensus is usually a stand-in for asean in these talks what are your thoughts i think part part of the problem with asean and south china sea is that for a long time they've had a bottom line consensus which is that peace and stability is in the interests of all countries uh the dispute should be resolved peacefully and in accordance with international law but moving beyond that has been very difficult every time a country the philippines tried it several times uh even before the arbiter tribunal in fact that's why they went for the article tribunal they tried several trying to to push asia a bit further but the consensus was was not there to to do that so um yes it it runs a risk of of bottom line consensus um and i get back to the code of conduct that if the bottom line consensus is just a largely symbolic with lots of nice words about freedom of navigation and overflight and international law that it won't actually impact the central dynamics of the dispute and it won't reduce tensions in the region thanks ian we've got just a few minutes so maybe let me throw one last question to everybody and you're also welcome to address anything else that's still on the table um so i took farm with the diplomat academy of vietnam asked to yin yan could you explain a little bit what international law means to china in the context of the code of conduct given that china said that it would seek a code of conduct in line with the national law and to ian and pia what do you expect the u.s to do to act more decisively i suppose the question could also be what would you hope the u.s might do to act more decisively in the south china sea um for my question i think the coc as people have already had rich consensus is that it's not the mechanism for to settle the dispute of the south china sea it is this is probably a a crisis management and crisis prevention mechanism but it's never the dispute settlement mechanism and also well people have been talking about the final settlement of the south china sea issue as a legal scholar i personally don't uh don't think that use of force is a solution i don't i don't i don't think so i do want it to support a legal solution to the south china sea dispute however i wanted to strengthen that the young class does not deal with any territorial disputes it can deal with the interpretation of difference of the on clause but but it cannot deal with the fundamental core issue of the south china sea which is the territorial dispute uh we can go to the icj uh which also requires some states constant but i think the legal settlement of the south china sea issue is a peaceful way of the final solution thank you thanks union uh pia yeah yeah i believe the the us is already doing quite a lot to safeguard not only its interest but the interests of its partners uh in the region both on the operational and then the legal front i guess um the important the more important discussion with regard to the us and one clause is as to whether it should become a party to their own clause and that is a question that has plagued the us for the longest time now uh and i think precisely in the proceedings before the clcs it's not able to to to to submit its own communications following the the the processes of the clcs and has to go by the way of the general assembly because it has been excluded from that process and china has harped on the fact that the us loses its moral ascendancy to be the policer of all of these of the region in in uh with with respect to its not being a party to the phone calls so i think that is something for serious consideration and i think that the new administration is also giving it a lot of thought uh and that would just really uh make the us i think a better player in in in the disputes and in law of the city in general thanks p.a yeah i i totally agree with you um i think the us is already doing a lot that's quite helpful in the south china sea uh calling out illegal claims um it's maintaining a presence in south china sea uh it's training and working with its southeast asian allies and partners to improve their capacity in their maritime domain awareness and i couldn't agree more with here but the us really needs to ratify hong kong because when it calls out other countries not just china but countries around the world they're justified in saying well you haven't ratified this agreement now of course the u.s says we you know we abide by it still all the sea et cetera et cetera but i think it would be a really helpful step forward if the us ratifies unclass um and hopefully the biden administration will start to think about that seriously and how to do it thank you ian thank you to all the speakers um we're now a minute over uh and so i'm gonna i'm gonna cut it off there as as pia said at the top of the event this is the 11th year that we've been doing the south china sea conference and i thank all of you for continuing to tune in this legal panel is always kind of the toughest and we have we managed to spend an hour remaining civil and not getting wrapped around the axle on minutiae of unclose or the 2016 arbitration award uh so i think that's a success uh as a reminder everything that you heard today is going to be up on youtube and csis in a few days if you missed anything and we will have the third of this four part series next month at a date to be determined so please join me in thanking our our guests um and yanya and pia and ian we will let you get off to bed i know it's getting late thank you so much again thank you thanks very much bye-bye bye everybody [Music]

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

Views: 2,230

Rating: 4.5428572 out of 5

Keywords: Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, bipartisan, policy, foreign relations, national security, think tank, politics, South China Sea, Southeast Asia, Asia, AMTI

Id: DlJqL2FT9hM

Length: 60min 42sec (3642 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021