Barack Obama faces South China Sea challenge

With the symbolic handshakes and unity photo-op, President Barack Obama’s high-profile summit with Southeast Asian leaders in California this week aims to step up pressure against China’s behaviour in disputed waters.

Forging a common front and encouraging bolder rhetoric against Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, however, will be a challenge among the diverse collection of VIP guests, who did not criticise China by name in past joint summit statements as the disputes flared on and off in recent years.

Decisions by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the bloc they lead, can easily be stalled. ASEAN includes governments aligned either with Washington or Beijing. Only four of its 10 member states are locked in the disputes with China and Taiwan, leading to sometimes conflicting views on handling the long-simmering rifts.

The regional bloc decides by consensus, meaning just one member can effectively shoot down any statement detrimental to China.

In recent years, summit statements have expressed concern over the escalating conflicts and called for freedom of navigation and overflight in the disputed territories, but they have rarely gone to specifics.

“I think it will be hard for the US to convince the 10 ASEAN states to adopt any language on the South China Sea disputes that go beyond what ASEAN statements have said in the past,” said Dr Malcolm Cook of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

With Mr Obama in his last year in office, certain ASEAN member states would probably not concede on any security or economic issue that might antagonise China, an economic lifeline to them, Dr Cook said.

A diplomat said that government envoys in Jakarta, where the ASEAN secretariat is located, have been negotiating the text of a joint statement to be issued by Mr Obama and his Southeast Asian counterparts.