China insisted on foreign military powers kept out of South China Sea —Locsin

Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Wednesday said China insisted on keeping “foreign military powers” out of the disputed South China Sea—a resource-rich area that Beijing claims nearly in its entirety.

Locsin said China was also against the participation of other countries in the planned oil and gas exploration in the waters with the Philippines.

“They said no foreign military power should be having military presence in the South China Sea and a variety, two or three others, you want to develop oil and gas they'll only be with us,” Locsin said on ANC.

China considers the sea dispute a purely Asian issue and is opposed to any foreign intervention, particularly that from the US.

The US and China are at odds over the long-seething territorial row in the South China Sea, where Beijing has turned several former reefs into artificial islands with military facilities, runways and surface to air missiles.

Although Washington is not a party to the disputes, it has said that it was in its national interest to ensure freedom of navigation and overflight in the contested waters where China, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have overlapping claims.

But lately, Locsin said China appeared to be “mellowing” on its stance, saying “it's no longer insisting on this and that.”

“The reports we’re getting now is this: China is mellowing. It’s no longer insisting on the exclusion of foreign powers,” he said, adding that such development was brought by Manila to the attention of its allies and the “enemies of China.”

The change in China’s position, he said, could increase the prospect of a “fair, just, and objective code of conduct being hammered out by Beijing and the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations that include the Philippines.

A regional code of conduct aims to prevent conflicting territorial claims in the vast potentially-oil rich region from erupting into violent confrontations or worse, an economically-devastating major conflict.

In place of a legally-binding code, China and ASEAN, which groups the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, settled for a mere declaration in 2002 that calls on claimants to exercise restraint and stop new occupation in the South China Sea.

But its non-binding nature and lack of provision to sanction misbehaving claimants, renders the accord useless against aggression.

Finalizing the code has acquired urgency due to series of confrontations between China and its smaller Southeast Asian neighbors with competing claims to the waters, like the Philippines and Vietnam. —NB, GMA News