Meeting Half-Way Through Peaceful Coexistance Is Imperative To Promote Cooperation For Shared Future In South China Sea – OpEd
China’s diplomatic thought of peaceful coexistence has laid the solid foundation for the effective building of a harmonious global community with a shared future for the entire humanity. Peaceful coexistence is all the more relevant in the context of Philippines-China relations.
The challenging bilateral relations between China and the Philippines over territorial disputes and maritime jurisdictional conflicts in the South China Sea have regrettably created an environment of security anxieties not only between the two countries but also among the littoral states of this contested maritime domain. This is sad to admit considering that China and the Philippines were very peaceful and friendly neighbors for more than a thousand of years prior to Western colonial control of Asia.
The South China Sea was not the sea that divided the Chinese and Filipinos but an important maritime bridge that deeply connected the two peoples. The South China Sea was the vital umbilical cord that strongly linked the lives of Chinese and Filipinos who have peacefully coexisted for mutual benefits for more than a millennium.
During the age of the antiquity, Chinese and Filipinos shared a common past, collective experiences, and mutual prosperity enabled by the maritime richness of the South China Sea. Both the Chinese and the Filipinos were sovereign people peacefully coexisting while enjoying the bounties of the South China Sea for their common development. Filipinos never viewed the Chinese as aggressive invaders but important compassionate traders. Sailing through the rough and calm waters of the South China Sea, the Chinese landed on the Philippine archipelagos not to fight and control using arms and ammunitions but to be friends in order to promote commerce with the inhabitants of the archipelago by offering porcelains, silver wares, and Chinese foods.
But the advent of the modern era changed the course of history between the Chinese and Filipinos. Invaded by Spain that had the intention of also intruding China, Filipinos were colonized, Catholicized and Westernized for 333 years. These three centuries of subjugation and exploitation under Spain imposed a worldview that was Western-centric that eventually embraced the Westphalian view of sovereignty that was estranged to China and many Asian nations.
Filipinos, with their own understanding of sovereignty, challenged Western colonialism. During many popular uprisings against Spain, the Chinese in the Philippines joined Filipinos to wage the Philippine revolution to uphold their common aspiration for freedom, sovereignty and prosperity. American colonial control of the Philippines, however, has reinforced Westernization of the Philippines that until now affects the mindset and ignorance of Filipinos towards China. Japanese invasion of the Philippines, though short-lived, also created a long-term effect of sustaining the Western control of the Philippines
Hence, when the Philippines finally achieved independence in 1946, Filipinos carried the baggage of colonialism and Westernism introduced and reinforced by Spanish, American and Japanese powers opposing China as a sovereign nation. Communist take-over of China in 1949 took another dimension of anti-China sentiment in the context of anti-communism during the cold war. In the post-cold war, anti-China sentiments in the Philippines found new expressions in the South China Sea disputes.
Pejorative view against China, influenced by the worldview of the Philippines’ erstwhile colonial master, the United States, informs the hardening of Philippine position on the South China Sea disputes. When framed within the action-reaction dynamics, this hardening of Philippine position also encourages the hardening of China’s position making the peaceful settlement of disputes more problematic and difficult.
To manage their differences, it is imperative for China and the Philippines to revisit their hardline approaches and explore ways to meet half way for a peaceful resolution. There is also a need to overcome anti-China feeling by implementing the Southeast Asian principle of amity and cooperation among states reinforced by China’s principles of peaceful co-existence upholding mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in international affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNLCOS) provides many important provisions for coastal states to peacefully settle maritime disputes in order to promote amity, cooperation and avoid violent conflicts at sea through direct consultations, dialogues and negotiations. UNCLOS mandates all parties to maritime disputes to come out with a final delimitation agreement to encourage cooperation and avoid violent conflict.
But pending a peaceful settlement through a final delimitation agreement, UNCLOS requires coastal states in conflicts to make every effort to meet half way by entering into a provisional arrangement to promote development cooperation of practical nature without prejudice to existing national claims through direct coordination, consultation and negotiation. Every effort is a duty to cooperate in good faith. UNCLOS urges all parties to take a moderate, non-hardline conciliatory approach and to deliberately avoid hostile unilateral actions in order to prevent unintended violent encounters at sea. When undertaking unilateral activities in disputed areas, UNCLOS obligates states to take actions that entail cooperation, consultation, and most importantly, prior notification.
According to UNCLOS, there are at least three types of half-way provisional arrangements in disputed areas that can effectively facilitate peaceful management of disputes in the South China Sea: 1) Development Cooperation Arrangements; 2) Provisional Boundary Agreement; and, 3) Mutual Restraint Arrangements.
Development Cooperation Arrangements can be in the form of joint fishery management, common development of hydrocarbon resources, marine environmental research, marine environmental protection, and the like. It is in this area where states can pursue concepts like blue development diplomacy in order to transform the South China Sea from a sea of conflict to a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation. Development cooperation is the primordial goal of the China-ASEAN Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and the ongoing negotiation for the conclusion of the Code of Conduct (COC).
Provisional boundary agreement, on the other hand, is viewed to be an alternative option to final maritime delimitation. It aims to pursue cooperation of pragmatic cooperation to fulfill the mandate of UNCLOS for all parties to exercise their duty to cooperate, which the DOC and the COC aim to achieve.
Finally, a mutual restraint arrangement obligates parties to UNCLOS to mutually exercise self-restraint in the conduct of harmful and offensive unilateral military and maritime law enforcement activities that hamper cooperation and jeopardize the reaching of a final agreement. Unilateral activities, though supporting national positions of parties, are inimical to a peaceful coexistence and pacific management of disputes.
Thus, parties must exercise self-restraint in the conduct of unilateral activities in contested waters. Parties should coordinate to avoid unintended violent encounters at sea. Coupled with the obligation to exercise mutual self-restraint is the application of the principle of due regard, which requires states to respect the inherent rights and legitimate national positions of parties on maritime issues.
With self-restraint and due regard, parties can really meet half way and peacefully coexist in order to promote cooperation, avoid military conflict, and peacefully manage the South China Sea disputes for common development and shared benefits in a shared future.
In conclusion, it is interesting to cite the recently published book of Pang Laikwan entitled One and All: the Logic of Chinese Sovereignty. This book is useful as we reflect on the pursuance of China’s doctrine of peaceful coexistence.
Sovereignty based on the Westphalian doctrine of the West resulted in intra-European wars and conflicts and aggressive European expansionism and colonialism of Asia, Africa and other parts of the world. But the European view of state sovereignty did not automatically extend to respecting the sovereignty of other peoples and nations that were subjugated and colonized because they differed from Europe.
China’s doctrine of peaceful coexistence is a correction of Western practice of sovereignty so that all nations, big or small, regardless of their political choices and levels of economic developments, can share a common peaceful future and live in harmony with each other.
- Delivered during the Commemorative Events Marking the 70th Anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence held in Beijing, China on 28 June 2024. Another version of this speech was delivered at the Second China-ASEAN Defense Think Tank Exchange held in Guangzhou, China on 25 June 2024.