China key player for ASEAN

China key player for ASEAN

JAKARTA (AFP): China's growing economic and military clout makes it a key outside player for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and there are worries Beijing is dominating relations, diplomats and analysts say.

Beijing's past or potential role as a power broker in Indochina's and Myanmar's civil wars and dictatorships, its influence on the nuclear issue in North Korea, and territorial disputes with ASEAN force it into the Southeast Asian picture, these sources say.

After Southeast Asian foreign ministers hold their annual meeting here this weekend, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen will take part in the third ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) on political security issues Tuesday.

It will be the first time he joins ministers of the United States, European Union and Japan in this annual dialog with the seven ASEAN countries.

"China is still considered as a long-term threat to the region," said Bantarto Bandoro of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Jakarta-based think-tank.

Therefore it makes perfect sense to engage Beijing in a continuing dialog under a formal setup to be able to "constrain its behavior," he added.

But there is growing concern within ASEAN that China is dictating the conduct of exchanges.

Beijing's foreign ministry said in April that "under no circumstance should ARF be used to exert pressure on other countries or to intervene in specific regional issues."

China said it preferred the ARF to remain as a forum on general security concerns "rather than a mechanism for them to handle and address specific security issues in the region."

Bandoro said China "is not as open as ASEAN would want it to be" in terms of its military activities and intentions, and that although it has registered its defense acquisitions with the UN, it has yet to respond to calls by some ASEAN states to a regional arms register within ARF.

While China's leaders have expressed willingness to resolve disagreements with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam over the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands "in accordance with recognized international law," it insists on bilateral rather than multilateral talks.

Earlier this year Beijing issued a decree unilaterally expanding its territorial waters in the South China Sea.

Official sources said ASEAN ministers are to include their concern over the situation in the South China Sea over "several outstanding issues" in their draft communique for the weekend meeting.

"I don't think that they (the Chinese) would want to discuss it (the South China Sea dispute) at all" during ASEAN's consultations with dialog partners on Wednesday and Thursday, but the issue is "inevitable," Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Rodolfo Severino said.

Even the entry this month of Myanmar, reviled in the West for its human rights record, as an ASEAN observer could be said to be "to some extent" motivated by ASEAN's desire to keep Yangon's military junta from gravitating to the orbit of China, an old military ally, Bandoro said.