ASEAN member states and China have just completed a first reading of the draft codex for the disputed body of water, a step forward in a dispute that has been relatively calm but is tensing up again over concerns of Beijing’s growing influence in the region.

Jose Tavares, Indonesia’s point man on ASEAN affairs, hailed the “positive development” in negotiations on the South China Sea dispute after negotiators from ASEAN and China hunkered down in Penang, Malaysia last week to discuss the evolving list of provisions.

The senior Foreign Ministry official said that the results of the Penang talks would be discussed in the upcoming ASEAN-China ministerial meeting slated for Wednesday in the Thai capital.

“This is good progress for the future, hopefully. If the COC is completed, it can greatly help manage behavior in the South China Sea,” Jose said during a press briefing in Jakarta on Friday.

During the AMM in Singapore last year, the partners introduced a “single draft” that underpins all negotiations for the code of conduct, a requirement in the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties (DOC) in the South China Sea that China has been flouting since its adoption.

At the ASEAN Summit in November last year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said negotiations on the COC could be completed in three years.

However, Jose said there would be many more rounds of negotiations before the codex could really be implemented, as disagreements remain on a number of contentious issues, especially on whether the COC would be legally binding and whether it applies only within a limited scope.

Nevertheless, he said there were hopes that most of the issues could be resolved by the time the negotiating parties completed a second reading and be concluded by the third reading of the draft.

The resource-rich South China Sea, which is one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes, lies at the center of a decades-long dispute between China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines.

China has made sweeping claims on the disputed waters based on “tradition”, which were invalidated by a 2016 international arbitration ruling favoring the other claimants. Beijing rejected the ruling, continuing instead to deploy military assets and exploit resources in the South China Sea.

Indonesia is not a claimant in the dispute but is at odds with China over rights to its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which eventually led to the area being renamed the North Natuna Sea.

Negotiations on the COC come amid heightened tensions as a result of altercations in the past weeks, particularly the reported standoff between Chinese and Vietnamese vessels near an oil block within Vietnam’s EEZ. Beijing had called for Hanoi to respect its claims to the region, but was met with a demand to remove a Chinese survey ship from its waters, AFP reports.

The Penang talks also coincided with a Wall Street Journal report claiming there was a “secret deal” between China and Cambodia — a close Beijing ally in ASEAN — to allow Chinese military to use a Cambodian naval base near Sihanoukville in the country’s southeast.

The report, citing unnamed United States officials, was strenuously denied by the Cambodian government, which has since given media a tour of the strategically crucial outpost. The Ream naval base is on the Gulf of Thailand and has easy access to the fiercely contested South China Sea. (tjs)

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