China and ASEAN make progress on South China Sea pact but can't finish talks this year

China and Southeast Asian countries have made progress on a South China Sea pact but won't be able to conclude decades of negotiations this year as agreed, three regional diplomats said Wednesday.

China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations began negotiating the so-called “code of conduct” in 2005 to prevent occasional confrontations in the disputed waters from turning into a major conflict that could threaten Asia’s economies. The accord mainly calls for self-restraint and discourages aggressive acts that could spark clashes in the waterway that is a key global trade route.

After years of closed-door negotiations, which at times were delayed due to tense clashes in the contested waters, China and ASEAN agreed in 2023 to speed up the negotiations and conclude the talks by this year.

Three senior Southeast Asian diplomats with direct knowledge of the negotiations told The Associated Press that after the final round of this year's talks last month, China and the ASEAN have provisionally agreed on about 80% of all the paragraphs that will be included in the agreement.

The last major sticking points are the geographic scope to be covered by the agreement, the definition of sensitive terms and whether the accord should be legally binding or not, according to the three diplomats. They spoke on condition of anonymity and without elaborating because they were not authorized to discuss the issues in public.

Negotiations will have to continue next year, when ASEAN's leadership rotates to Singapore. The Philippines, which led the bloc this year, initiated more meetings, at least once a month, which effectively provided more time for negotiators to try to resolve issues, the diplomats said.

China and Malaysia, which currently oversees ASEAN's overall relations with Beijing, jointly led at least 10 major rounds of negotiations this year.

The status of the negotiations on the proposed agreement, as well as continuing incidents in the South China Sea, will be high in the agenda when ASEAN leaders hold an annual summit in Manila starting this weekend. They will engage with leaders of Asian and Western nations, including the United States and China, after their meeting.

China and four of ASEAN’s member states — Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam — along with Taiwan have been locked in decades-long territorial standoffs in the busy waterway, which is also believed to be sitting atop undersea deposits of oil and gas.

Confrontations have escalated particularly between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces in disputed shoals in recent years. A 1988 clash with Chinese forces over a disputed reef killed dozens of Vietnamese military personnel in some of the deadliest fighting known so far in the South China Sea.

Julio Amador III, a Manila-based geopolitical analyst, said the proposed code of conduct may not be able to totally deter aggression in the disputed waters, but if it’s combined with other actions, including foreign diplomacy and a strengthened military capability, it can make would-be aggressors think twice.

“Restraining great powers takes a lot of effort,” Amador said in reference to China. “We cannot be a one-trick pony as a country. You need to have all the tools, whether it’s a code of conduct, whether you bring a case against China or whether you increase your military spending.”

The contested territory has long been feared as an Asian flashpoint and has become a sensitive front in the U.S.-China rivalry in the region.

Washington has repeatedly warned that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea. China, however, has warned the U.S. to stay away from what it calls a purely Asian dispute.