Between Rising Powers: China, Singapore and India

IX. ASEAN

192 Between Rising Powers C H A P T E R IX ASEAN Singapore’s relations with China reflect its acute awareness of sensitivities in ASEAN over its being the only Chinese-majority state outside China; and its need to strengthen its hand in its dealings with Beijing by placing its China initiatives within a larger regional framework. ASEAN is, therefore, an integral part of Singapore’s policy towards China. Singapore drew on ASEAN’s ability to provide its members with a multiplier effect in their international relations although it was (and is) not a supranational organization along the lines of the European Union. But in drawing on ASEAN as a diplomatic resource, Singapore keenly was aware that there was more than one view of China among regional states. The crisis over the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia had revealed fault lines in the ASEAN view, from one extreme in which Indonesia’s closeness to Vietnam attested to its suspicion of China, and the other extreme, in which Thailand and Singapore believed that Beijing was the lesser threat to Southeast 09 BRisingPowers Ch 9 8/1/07, 3:57 PM 192 ASEAN 193 Asia. The disappearance of the Cold War and the end of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia transformed such perceptions and approaches, but there were residual differences over China in an expanded ASEAN that included, not least, its former nemesis, Vietnam. In emerging as ASEAN’s most articulate exponent of the need to engage China, Singapore gave apprehensions of China due weight. However, its response, which emanated from its general policy of engagement, was that a peacefully rising Beijing must be given a stake in the Southeast Asian status quo by having its legitimate interests accommodated — even as regional states sought to ensure that America remained the balancer power in East Asia as a whole. It is outside the scope of this work to describe the evolution of China’s relations with the individual states of ASEAN,1 or to show how the interplay of intentions, interests and behaviour among the external powers — America, China, Japan, Russia and, increasingly, India — influenced the direction of regional affairs. What is important is to recognize that Southeast Asia was not just another region coming to terms with China’s rise. How Beijing dealt with its periphery would be a barometer of the rising power’s expected behaviour in the world at large. THE SOUTH CHINA SEA For the region, the most serious security issue vis-àvis China in the post-Cold War period has been the South China Sea dispute. It centres on the contested ownership of more than 200 small islands and reefs known as the Spratly Islands, claimed in whole or in part by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. The Spratlys include valuable 09 BRisingPowers Ch 9 8/1/07, 3:57 PM 193 194 Between Rising Powers fishing grounds and are believed to contain oil and gas deposits; they also occupy a crucial strategic position straddling vital sea lanes of communication that link the Indian and Pacific Oceans through which much of global trade is conducted.2 China’s assertiveness has been evident since the SinoVietnamese clash over some Spratlys reefs in the late 1980s. In 1992, Beijing passed the Territorial Law of the Sea, claiming sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea; it awarded an American company a contract to search for oil in waters off Vietnam; and its forces occupied the Hanoi-claimed Da Lac Reef. Chinese-built structures, found on the Manila-claimed Mischief Reef in 1995, were upgraded into a permanent military installation in 1998. Meanwhile, in 1996, China extended its baseline claims to the Paracel Islands.3 Although the issue did not involve all ASEAN members, the region’s common stake in resolving it peacefully was underscored by several developments, including Indonesia’s decision to play a role by sponsoring informal workshops on managing potential conflicts in the South China Sea.4 At the official level, ASEAN foreign ministers signed the ASEAN Declaration on the South China Sea in Manila in July 1992. The grouping’s first common position on the dispute, the declaration did not deal with the issue of sovereignty but advanced an informal code of conduct consisting of self-restraint, the avoidance of the use of force and the peaceful resolution of disputes. Intimations of the principles of the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and...