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ASEAN, China to resume South China Sea COC talk in July
Chinese Ambassador to ASEAN Deng Xijun said that senior officials of both sides had agreed to meet in person in Jakarta next month to continue the second set of readings of the South China Sea's Code of Conduct.
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Chinese dredging vessels are purportedly seen in the waters around Fiery Cross Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in this still image from video taken by a P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft provided by the United States Navy on May 21, 2015. (Reuters/US Navy Handout)
T
he negotiation between ASEAN and China on the Code of Conduct (COC) for the South China Sea is set to resume next month in Jakarta, though officials from both parties doubt the talks will finish by the expected timeframe of the end of this year.
While most diplomatic activities were forced to move to cyberspace at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, COC negotiations were halted altogether as officials were concerned over the sensitive information discussed during the meetings.
The year-long pause has made the three-year target proposed by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in 2018 increasingly impossible to achieve, as negotiators must pick up where they left off. The last meeting on the COC was held in 2019.
But China’s ambassador to ASEAN, Deng Xijun, said recently that senior officials from both sides had agreed to catch up on talks.
“We’re glad that Indonesia proposed to host a physical [meeting] next month in Jakarta. I hope it will be a successful one,” he told journalists on Thursday.
Read also: Indonesia offers to host next South China Sea COC talk
During an ASEAN-China foreign ministerial meeting in Chongqing, China, earlier this week, Indonesia offered to host an in-person meeting over the South China Sea COC. Jakarta had successfully hosted an ASEAN Leaders Meeting in April, in which member state leaders called for an immediate end to the violence in Myanmar.
