In a flurry of late-April private talks, Filipino diplomats challenged officials from China over the recent pattern of assertive behaviour from Chinese vessels in the South China Sea. The behaviour by the Chinese included the early-February targeting of a Philippine Coast Guard ship with a military-grade laser near a disputed shoal and in late March a Chinese vessel purportedly came within 10 meters of a Vietnamese Fisheries Surveillance vessel while inside Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
Unfortunately for the Philippines and Vietnam, these instances of Chinese assertions within their claimed EEZ have become increasingly common, including the use of coastguard and fishing vessels to harass other vessels for strategic advantage.
This type of “grey zone” tactic has increased following China’s rapid artificial island-building campaign in the South China Sea and the ruling of the international arbitral tribunal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in favour of the Philippines on most of its submissions in its dispute against China in 2016. For other South China Sea claimant states that similarly reject Beijing’s so-called “nine-dash-line”, such as Indonesia, tensions over disputed maritime boundaries continue to permeate their respective relationships with Beijing. While the prominent nine-dash-line disputes in the South China Sea capture most of the region’s attention, there are also examples of Southeast Asian states resolving maritime boundary disputes in positive signs for regional maritime order centred on UNCLOS.
Read the full article in The Jakarta Times