By Fu Ying
CHINA has clear policies on issues relating to the South China Sea and has made remarkable progress in cooperating with countries in the region. China and the members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations attach great importance to marine collaboration.
The Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), signed in 2002, serves as a guiding document for regional cooperation. Bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the region covers maritime security, economy and scientific research. Cooperation mechanisms such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM), ASEAN and China Transport Ministers Meeting and China-ASEAN Maritime Cooperation Fund have been set up.
Countries in the region also agree on the application of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea in the South China Sea (CUES), and consultations on the Code of Conduct in South China Sea (COC) have made steady progress.
Maritime cooperation has greatly boosted mutual trust and formed shared interests in the region. From January to September 2020, China’s direct investment in ASEAN countries grew by 76.6 percent year-on-year to $10.72 billion. During the same period, the total trade volume between China and ASEAN economies increased by 5 percent year-on-year to $481.81 billion, making the regional bloc China’s largest trading partner. China has been actively promoting cooperation with other countries on maritime policy and management to protect the marine environment, marine ecosystem and biodiversity, thus facilitating the development of the “blue economy”.
However, in recent years, there has been a trend of “anti-globalization” and a rise in unilateralism, which inevitably weakens the momentum of global maritime cooperation. I trust that most countries in the region are willing to continue to promote maritime governance and are in favor of innovation and improvement of the governance system.
President Xi Jinping called for the building of a maritime community with a shared future in a recent speech, stressing the importance of “building a peaceful, cooperative and harmonious ocean, and building a maritime order featuring peace and tranquility, and win-win cooperation”, thus making the oceans “the shared treasure of all humankind”.
The Greater Mekong Biodiversity Conservation Corridor Initiative, which has been implemented for 15 years, has achieved marked progress toward this goal. A renewed Global Biodiversity Framework is also in the pipeline. The South China Sea is one of the regions with the richest biodiversity in the world, which, however, is greatly threatened by overfishing, excessive exploitation and pollution, among other things, at an alarmingly rapid rate. This calls for parties to take immediate actions.
The ultimate goal of maritime cooperation and governance is to serve the common interests of mankind. Oceans are a treasure trove of resources, and strategic spaces that support the mankind’s future development. The exploration and development of oceans has become an increasingly important issue for countries. In addition to traditional areas of cooperation, we should accelerate innovation in frontier technologies such as marine biomedicine and deep-sea exploration, and allow smart marine technologies to benefit more people.
– The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
