President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the Philippines is working on a separate code of conduct with neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam, regarding their territorial conflicts in the South China Sea, as a broader agreement with an aggressive China has not been progressing.
Speaking at a forum at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, the President admitted that tensions in the South China Sea were growing “with persistent unlawful threats and challenges against Philippine sovereign rights and jurisdiction over our exclusive economic zone.”
“We are still waiting for the code of conduct between China and Asean and the progress has been rather slow, unfortunately,” he said.
“We have taken the initiative to approach those other countries around Asean with whom we have existing territorial conflicts, Vietnam being one of them, Malaysia being another, and to make our own code of conduct. Hopefully this will grow further and extend to other Asean countries,” Marcos Jr. noted.
In November 2002, members of Asean and China signed in Phnom Penh a nonbinding declaration on conduct in the South China Sea, the first time that China accepted a multilateral agreement over the disputes in the region. Though the declaration fell short of a binding code of conduct, which the Philippines sought, the agreement was pushed to ease tensions in the area and create guidelines for conflict resolution.
In 20025, the first draft of guidelines to implement the DOC was drawn up, but it was not adopted until 2011. China has since refused to discuss it further, arguing that the time was not ripe yet and preferred to deal with individual claimants through bilateral negotiations.
Without the cooperation of the neighborhood bully that is China, seeking and working on a separate code of conduct with neighboring countries could be a good strategy to bring stability and a semblance of rules in the area that has been the subject of coercive tactics, dangerous maneuvers, rampant illegal fishing and extraction of resources, as well as the militarization of reclaimed features. While most of the offenses can squarely be pinned on China, a code of conduct among neighboring countries with similar territorial disputes could pressure the bully to rein in its aggressive behavior, which at this point, is a good start for the worsening situation in the West Philippine Sea in particular and the South China Sea in general.*
