Manila, Nov 5 — The growing tensions in the South China Sea remained a key issue at the recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus) and related engagements held in the Philippines, a report has stated.
It noted that Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles last week said that China’s military expansion was creating a “condition of pressure” across Southeast Asia, amid a dispute between Beijing and Manila over China’s participation in the ASEAN defence summit in Cebu, Philippines.
Addressing the media on the sidelines of ADMM-Plus, Marles termed China’s military build-up the largest conventional military expansion witnessed since World War II. He also flagged Beijing’s growing assertiveness as a challenge for Australia and called for closer coordination among like-minded partners and allies, a report in 'The Diplomat' mentioned.
“We need to be ensuring that how we understand the rules of the road continues to apply, because for a middle power like Australia, it is actually the rules which give us agency,” said Marles.
The report also highlighted that Australia had protested China's test-firing of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in the South Pacific in July, describing the launch as “provocative and destabilising.”
“Over the past few years, China has also increased both the frequency and the intensity of its incursions into areas of the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines, resulting in a string of increasingly dangerous confrontations between the two sides,” The Diplomat report mentioned.
The report stated that the maritime dispute also spilt over into a diplomatic controversy, with China's Ministry of Defence accusing the Philippines of obstructing Beijing's participation in the ADMM meetings and violating “basic diplomatic protocols.”
Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun subsequently skipped the meeting, which brings together defence ministers from ASEAN's 11 member countries and its eight dialogue partners — Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the United States. China was instead represented by its defense attache, marking the lowest-level Chinese representation at the ADMM-Plus since the forum's inception in 2010, the report detailed.
In subsequent remarks, it said Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro did not respond directly to China's allegation, saying Beijing was “given an opportunity to articulate their position, which is not any different from what they have been articulating before.”
“The Chinese comments reflect the poor state of relations between Beijing and Manila, which have frayed due to continued confrontations in contested parts of the South China Sea, particularly over Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands,” The Diplomat report stated.