“All countries need to strengthen cooperation in the South China Sea” -by – Dr. Lai Thai Binh

Dr. Lai Thai Binh, Deputy Director-General, South China Sea (East Sea) Institute, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam

1. While the world community continues to deal with Covid-19 and many socio-economic consequences, ensuring peace, stability and cooperation in the South China Sea becomes even more important.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is faced with certain crises in health, social, and economic sectors and can be judged as the worst crisis since the second World War. The impacts from the Covid-19 pandemic are all-encompassing and affecting all sectors of the World economy. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), by the end of June 2020, instead of increasing by 3%, World GDP will decrease by about 5%, the largest decrease since World War II.

In at least 60 years, 89 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty (up by 15%), public debt will skyrocket, and the IMF also forecasts that the ratio of total public debt to GDP of advanced economies will increase from 105% in 2019 to 132% by 2021. With the form of blockade and social isolation, the global health crisis has become a worldwide social crisis. In 2021 and 2022, the world economy faces many risks and continues to be weakened by the pandemic due to higher-than-expected global inflation, supply disruption, energy price crisis, the stagnation of global trade… which makes the recovery of the global economic picture uneven across regions and between countries, and there are many unpredictable uncertainties…

The IMF’s October 2022 economic outlook forecast also states that “Global growth is forecast to slow from 6.0 percent in 2021 to 3.2 percent in 2022 and 2.7 percent in 2023. This is the weakest growth profile since 2001 except for the global financial crisis and the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic”.

The South China Sea plays an important role in development in the region and in the world. Strategically, the South China Sea plays an important role in terms of security and military for many countries in the region in particular as well as for the stability of the whole region in general. Historically there have been many invasions from the South China Sea attacking coastal states. Controlling the South China Sea also means controlling important sea lanes that govern the regional security landscape.

In terms of socio-economic, in addition to seafood and energy resources, the South China Sea is also the second busiest international shipping route in the world (after the Mediterranean), accounting for more than half of the tonnage of global maritime trade, playing a vital role not only for the surrounding countries and territories, but also for East Asia and the world. During and after the Covid-19 pandemic, the South China Sea has become even more important due to its role in connecting continents, promoting international trade and ensuring supply chains are not disrupted. This will allow economies in the region to quickly recover from the pandemic and address the legitimate needs of the people.

However, regional maritime security continues to face many uncertainties, including militarization of the islands, military exercises and live-fire firing, and the conduct of pressure operations by military aircraft in the South China Sea etc. According to many observers, this process is happening relatively quickly and is likely to continue for a long time and in many different areas in the South China Sea with military modernization buildup in the region (such as Indonesia which recently purchased 36 F-15s from the US and 42 Rafaels from France to bolster its air force; the Philippines has purchased Brahmos supersonic missiles with anti-ship capabilities and possibly deployed in the South China Sea) further aggravated the situation.

Great power competition continues to intensify, including over Taiwan, exacerbating security challenges posed by the militarization of the South China Sea. Along with the increase in China-US-Taiwan tensions, when US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, China held exercises around Taiwan and sent 21 military aircrafts into Taiwan’s ADIZ. Fortunately, there has been no escalation of tensions since this visit and these shows that countries inside and outside the region currently have no interest in going to war here.

The Covid-19 pandemic has increased transnational crimes such as smuggling of medical materials, food, drugs, piracy, human trafficking, etc. Notably, the so-called “gray zone tactics” are used to increase pressure in the South China Sea, making the security of the South China Sea more serious and potentially triggering conflicts.

2. The region highly appreciates the efforts of countries in cooperation to enhance maritime security, in which new forms of international cooperation are expected to help improve the situation.

Many countries expressed their opposition to unilateral actions that complicate the situation and threaten peace, stability, safety and security of navigation in the South China Sea. A 2022 study by the US State Department argued that China’s claims in the South China Sea have no basis under international law, and asserted that these claims seriously affect many regulations of international law as outlined in the 1982 UNCLOS.

The US State Department on June 2, 2022 said China’s unilateral fishing ban in the South China Sea was inconsistent with the 2016 arbitration award and International law. “We urge China to comply with its obligations under international law,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price. On May 31, 2022, the Philippines also sent a note protesting China’s unilateral imposition of a fishing ban in the East Sea, including the waters within the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of the Philippines and Vietnam.

Almost 1 year before that, speaking at a ASEAN – China meeting in June 2021, Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Dung said that although maintaining peace, stability and security in the South China Sea is the common interest of ASEAN and China, the unilateral actions still occur, violating the legal rights of countries along the South China Sea, increasing tensions and eroding trust, going against the joint efforts of ASEAN and China.

In many meetings between national leaders in the year 2022, press reports show that the leaders emphasize the importance of ensuring security, safety, freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea, resolving disputes by peaceful means, including full respect for diplomacy and legal processes, without the use or threat of use of force, on the basis of international law, in particular the 1982 UNCLOS; fully, comprehensively and effectively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), soon finalize the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC).

This shows that the consistency in positions on the South China Sea of countries continues to be strengthened. Recently, Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the People’s Republic of China on the occasions of the 25th ASEAN-China Summit and the 20th Anniversary of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia, on 11 November 2022 also emphasized those directions.

In the 2022 Shangri La dialogue in Singapore, Alice Guitton, Director-General, International Relations and Strategy, Ministry of the Armed Forces, France said “we support mechanisms that strengthen governance of the maritime domain and reduce tensions. Those tensions have to be reduced in two ways: first, at political level, and we see that in the South China Sea the Code of Conduct could represent a big advance, if indeed it respects sovereign interests and upholds the Law of the Sea; at technical level, by also supporting mechanisms just like the regional fisheries management organisations, fighting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing”.

3. In order to continue handling the long-standing instability in the South China Sea, countries need to continue joint efforts in the following directions:

(i) Enhance meetings, exchange of information, organize international scientific seminars to find concrete ways of working effectively with each other, especially in dealing with old and new security challenges;

(ii) Promote development cooperation including the implementation of maritime projects (especially oil and gas projects), strengthen comprehensive cooperation related to marine spatial planning, stable and sustainable fishing, respond to climate change and sea level rise, protect the maritime environment etc, while continuing to promote the implementation of the DOC and achieve a substantive, mutually beneficial and effective COC;

(iii) Last but not least, efforts should be continued in maintaining a rules-based regional order, peaceful settlement of disputes, and observance of international law (especially UNCLOS) 1982).

Achieving these things not only brings concrete and practical benefits to countries inside and outside the region, but also creates opportunities for countries to promote the historical values of peacekeeping and development in the region and around the world.

(Binh Thai Lai is a deputy director-general of the East Sea (South China Sea) Institute, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam. Prior to his current position, he served as the deputy consul-general of Vietnam in Houston (Texas), deputy director-general and assistant director-general at Americas Department in the Vietnamese ministry of foreign affairs, director of the American research division, director and deputy director of the North America division, and as a Vietnam-U.S. relations desk officer.

Lai has participated in various research projects on U.S.-Vietnam relations, including the book Vietnam-Americas: Challenges and Opportunities, and he coauthored the book U.S.-China relations: Cooperation and Competition From the Perspective of Balance of Power. Before joining the Vietnamese ministry of foreign affairs, Lai was a product manager for FPT Corporation, the largest IT company in Vietnam, and was a media supervisor for Goldsun Advertising and Printing Company.

He earned a BA in international economics from Hanoi Foreign Trade University, another BA in law from Hanoi National University, a postgraduate diploma in international management from the International Management Institute in New Delhi, an MA in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, and a Ph.D in International relations from the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.)