JAKARTA: Negotiations on a code of conduct (COC) for the South China Sea will be intensified this year, Indonesian and Chinese officials said on Wednesday, as the region frets over China’s assertiveness in the strategic waterway.
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi met with Chinese counterpart Qin Gang in Jakarta, ahead of a round of negotiations on the code starting in March.
“Indonesia and ASEAN would like to produce an effective, substantive and actionable (code of conduct),” Retno said, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a regional bloc that Indonesia chairs this year.
Qin added that China and ASEAN will jointly safeguard peace and stability in the strategic trade corridor, through which about $3.4 trillion of goods pass each year.
China would work with ASEAN countries to accelerate consultations on the code, he said.
Beijing claims much of the South China Sea and has built islands from which it is capable of deploying advanced weaponry. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Brunei also have some overlapping claims.
China and ASEAN countries agreed in 2002 to work toward creating a code of conduct and it was 15 years before moves were underway to create a framework for negotiations.
Some experts have accused China of intentionally holding up a process to create a binding set of rules, noting its use of grey-zone tactics and strategic ambiguity to press its territorial claims. China says it is committed to seeing the process through.
The code would advance a 2002 commitment by all parties to ensure freedom of navigation and overflight and “(refrain) from action of inhabiting on the presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features.”
The latest talks would take place against a backdrop of increased diplomatic protests against China from the Philippines, which has increased overtures to Western powers like the United States and Australia to counter what it calls China’s “aggressiveness.”
Qin on Wednesday said Southeast Asian nations “should not be forced to take sides.”
“New cold war and competitiveness of great powers shouldn’t appear in the Asia-Pacific region. We believe that Indonesia and ASEAN will make their judgment and choice independently and autonomously in the fundamental interest of the stability, development and prosperity of the region,” he said.
They also discussed the crisis in military-ruled Myanmar, where ASEAN has struggled to get the generals to implement an agreed ‘five-point consensus’ for peace after the 2021 coup.
“As ASEAN chair, Indonesia will embark on engagements with all stakeholders in Myanmar, with the one goal of opening up a possibility of an inclusive national dialogue,” Retno said, adding Indonesia appreciates China’s support for the process.
China, ASEAN to intensify negotiations on South China Sea code
https://arab.news/rs485
China, ASEAN to intensify negotiations on South China Sea code
- China and ASEAN to jointly safeguard peace and stability in the strategic trade corridor, through which about $3.4 trillion of goods pass each year
- Beijing claims much of the South China Sea and has built islands from which it is capable of deploying advanced weaponry
Carney says Canada has no plans to pursue free trade agreement with China as Trump threatens tariffs
Carney says Canada has no plans to pursue free trade agreement with China as Trump threatens tariffs
TORONTO: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Sunday his country has no intention of pursuing a free trade deal with China. He was responding to US President Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 100 percent tariff on goods imported from Canada if America’s northern neighbor went ahead with a trade deal with Beijing.
Carney said his recent agreement with China merely cuts tariffs on a few sectors that were recently hit with tariffs.
Trump claims otherwise, posting that “China is successfully and completely taking over the once Great Country of Canada. So sad to see it happen. I only hope they leave Ice Hockey alone! President DJT”
The prime minister said under the free trade agreement with the US and Mexico there are commitments not to pursue free trade agreements with nonmarket economies without prior notification.
“We have no intention of doing that with China or any other nonmarket economy,” Carney said. “What we have done with China is to rectify some issues that developed in the last couple of years.”
In 2024, Canada mirrored the United States by putting a 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles from Beijing and a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum. China had responded by imposing 100 percent import taxes on Canadian canola oil and meal and 25 percent on pork and seafood.
Breaking with the United States this month during a visit to China, Carney cut its 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on those Canadian products.
Carney has said there would be an initial annual cap of 49,000 vehicles on Chinese EV exports coming into Canada at a tariff rate of 6.1 percent, growing to about 70,000 over five years. He noted there was no cap before 2024. He also has said the initial cap on Chinese EV imports was about 3 percent of the 1.8 million vehicles sold in Canada annually and that, in exchange, China is expected to begin investing in the Canadian auto industry within three years.
Trump posted a video Sunday in which the chief executive of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association warns there will be no Canadian auto industry without US access, while noting the Canadian market alone is too small to justify large scale manufacturing from China.
“A MUST WATCH. Canada is systematically destroying itself. The China deal is a disaster for them. Will go down as one of the worst deals, of any kind, in history. All their businesses are moving to the USA. I want to see Canada SURVIVE AND THRIVE! President DJT,” Trump posted on social media.
Trump’s post on Saturday said that if Carney “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”
“We can’t let Canada become an opening that the Chinese pour their cheap goods into the U.S,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“We have a , but based off — based on that, which is going to be renegotiated this summer, and I’m not sure what Prime Minister Carney is doing here, other than trying to virtue-signal to his globalist friends at Davos.”
Trump’s threat came amid an escalating war of words with Carney as the Republican president’s push to acquire Greenland strained the NATO alliance.
Carney has emerged as a leader of a movement for countries to find ways to link up and counter the US under Trump. Speaking in Davos before Trump, Carney said, “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu” and he warned about coercion by great powers — without mentioning Trump’s name. The prime minister received widespread praise and attention for his remarks, upstaging Trump at the World Economic Forum.
Trump’s push to acquire Greenland has come after he has repeatedly needled Canada over its sovereignty and suggested it also be absorbed into the United States as a 51st state. He posted an altered image on social media this week showing a map of the United States that included Canada, Venezuela, Greenland and Cuba as part of its territory.
