Can ASEAN's China policy succeed?

The admission of Vietnam marks an important moment in the 28- year long history of ASEAN. Seen from East Asia, our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin notes that ASEAN has reversed the logic behind its creation in 1967, and has been a political more than an economic success story. ASEAN now faces a major test of how to manage its relationship with China.

HONG KONG (JP): ASEAN's success in the politics of cohesive diplomacy has been pointedly illustrated by the issue of Vietnam. Vietnam is becoming an ASEAN member now, but not because the United States had been pondering the decision years ago to normalize relations with Vietnam.

To the contrary, ASEAN led the way. President Bill Clinton belatedly announced normalization with Vietnam recently, in part because the U.S. saw the need to catch up with ASEAN.

As the 28th annual Foreign Minister's Meeting (FMM) of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) gets underway in Brunei, the grouping has turned its original motivation on its head. Formed in the belief that economic cooperation would help promote political togetherness, ASEAN's main achievement has been political and diplomatic solidarity, while economic accord has lagged behind.

An ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) was belatedly agreed to in the 1980s instead of the 1970s. It is still something of an unproven institution. The ASEAN Economic Ministers do not yet meet as frequently or as purposefully as they should.

The Foreign Ministers meeting, on the other hand, has come to resemble an umbrella that gets larger every time it is opened, thus enabling more moves to take place, and more progress to be accomplished, beneath its expanding shade.

The annual FMM get-together has become a complex array of meetings. First come the preparatory meetings of officials, followed by the FMM alone. This is followed by the PMC , as it is widely known, -- the post-ministerial conference, now longer in duration than the FMM itself. This consists of meetings with ASEAN observers (Papua New-Guinea, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia) and, both separately and collectively, with ASEAN's dialog partners (Japan, Korea, the U.S., the European Union, Australia, Canada and New Zealand).

Last year, a further round of discussions after the PMC was formally initiated. The 18-member ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), including all seven dialogue partners, the observers apart from Myanmar and Cambodia, plus China and Russia but not yet India, is avowedly concerned with the issue of regional security. Whether ARF will provide the means for the development of collective security in Asia remains to be seen. For now, it comes closest to doing so.

Amidst all these multilateral meetings, significant bilateral progress in diplomatic relationships can also be registered, given the multilateral pressure for conciliation rather than confrontation which pervades the overall get-together.

One example of what may be accomplished in Brunei this year under the expansive ASEAN FMM-PMC-ARF umbrella is already obvious.

There can be no question that deteriorating Sino-American relations could easily affect regional stability. Already, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen have arranged at least one quiet get- together in the umbrella's shade.

Such a meeting will not end the deterioration, but it might well put some brakes on what Henry Kissinger has described as the "free fall" in the Sino-American relationship. Should current Beijing intransigence continue to manifest itself, both in relation to the U.S., and also to the South China Sea issue, then Qian will come under subtle pressure in Brunei to be more flexible. The ASEAN faith, based on past performance, is that talking over problems can ease many tensions.

This has given rise to the charge that ASEAN is nothing more than a "talking shop" wherein words are plentiful but substantive achievements are much less commonplace. This may be true for any single meeting but, taken over time, it is patently false.

Formed in the wake of konfrontasi between Indonesia and Malaysia/Singapore, during ASEAN's 28-year existence it has tamed, though not ended, the abundant raw material for Southeast Asian regional discord. Territorial disputes between ASEAN members have first been stilled and then negotiated, rather than fought over. Other emotional issues have been kept within bounds.

The overall ASEAN accomplishment is vividly illustrated by the main new departure due to take place in Brunei.

When ASEAN was formed in 1967 the still-expanding Vietnam War was the key geopolitical reality in the region. ASEAN gained much of its cohesion and strength in the late 1970s and early-to- mid 1980s as it opposed Vietnam's attempt to conquer Cambodia.

Now, in Brunei, the country ASEAN once opposed, Vietnam, is being elevated from its former observer status to become the seventh full member of the organization.

Again, seen from East Asia, it appears that, in making this move, ASEAN is taking a calculated risk.

Vietnam is often regarded as being more East Asian in temperament, more part of the Sinified cultural world rather than the polyglot world of Southeast Asia. ASEAN-wide reflexes may not always come easily to Vietnam's entrenched bureaucracy. Vietnam still shares a major interest with China and North Vietnam -- the survival of the communist political system.

Above all, as the ASEAN Six become Seven, the three Indochinese states cease to be a de facto buffer between ASEAN and China. Put another way, ASEAN now shares a land border with China. When and if Laos and Myanmar become full ASEAN members, the Sino-ASEAN land border will lengthen.

The risk seems worth taking for several reasons. Vietnam yearns for greater economic dynamism which it hopes ASEAN membership will help impart. Joining AFTA will not be easy -- but the addition of 70 million Vietnamese to the AFTA market could, if successfully accomplished, make AFTA far more formidable.

For the foreseeable future, ASEAN will have to grapple with the ever-growing regional reality of an assertive China. In this geopolitical task, Vietnam will be a very useful guide, even if it is communist.

Further, with Vietnam's accession, all the Southeast Asian claimants to disputed islands in the South China Sea -- Vietnam, Brunei, the Philippines and Malaysia -- are within ASEAN. Only the two Chinese claimants -- China and Taiwan -- remain outside. Vietnam will probably provide a healthy corrective to an enduring ASEAN mistake, the tendency to think that the mere issuance of the ASEAN Declaration on the South China Sea in July 1992 binds all claimants to conciliation.

The most important document for China that year was its own law on the South China Sea, passed in February 1992 by the National Peoples Congress, effectively annexing the whole sea as part of China. That law implicitly involved the largest ASEAN member, Indonesia, since it could mean that Beijing claims the Natuna Islands, too.

ASEAN's technique, which Vietnam will now have to adopt, has been to minimize territorial discord by freezing the status quo in any dispute and conducting dialog. The recent Philippine reaction to Chinese installations on Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands served to draw attention to the fact that China has been quietly changing the status quo, and implementing its own law, since 1992 -- even though there was a tentative Indonesian sponsored unofficial dialogue with ASEAN countries proceeding at the same time.

Somewhat imperiously, in what looks like a blatant attempt to "divide and rule" among those nations which the Middle Kingdom has traditionally regarded as "tributary states", China has insisted that all South China Sea disputes be settled with it on a bilateral basis.

The challenge facing ASEAN both now in the Brunei meetings, and also into that foreseeable future, is to insist, quietly but firmly yet persistently, that ASEAN solidarity is a multilateral diplomatic reality which Beijing must recognize and accept. It will never be easy, especially amidst the current profound uncertainties of China's domestic politics. But ASEAN has no choice but to assert itself in this modest way, because only in cohesion does Southeast Asia gain an ability to diplomatically counter China's greater overall power.

The South China Sea will take much of the spotlight in Brunei but it remains only one of many other issues which will be raised under the expanding umbrella.

ASEAN celebrates one failure and one success.

The success came when Myanmar's military rulers, almost certainly anxious to increase their ASEAN connections, and decrease their wider isolation, released Aung San Suu Kyi from six years of house arrest.

This enables ASEAN to claim that its policy of "constructive engagement" with Myanmar was bearing fruit after all. But ASEAN cannot sit back and relax. Rather, it must gently urge Myanmar's generals to enter into further constructive engagement with Ms. Suu Kyi.

The ASEAN failure came when Philippine-Singaporean relations severely deteriorated over the Singapore hanging of a maid, Flor Contemplacion, who was convicted for murder, despite half-hearted requests from the government in Manila for a stay of execution. It was a complex incident which usefully reminded everyone that ASEAN solidarity remains an elitist concept -- which can be easily damaged either by Singaporean elite disdain for Southeast Asians, or Philippine elite disdain for their own people.