#SouthChinaSea - PRC pressure on Asean forces members to choose sides
The four-point consensus reached with the three ASEAN members – Brunei, Cambodia and Laos – says that the SCS dispute is "not an issue of China and ASEAN as a whole" and the territorial and maritime issues must be resolved through consultations and negotiations by the parties directly concerned.
In their consensus, the three countries and China agreed, according to China's Xinhua news agency, that they should oppose attempts to "unilaterally impose an agenda on other countries" and agreed on rights of sovereign states to resolve their disputes between themselves under international law.
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (SCMP) quoted a Chinese foreign ministry statement that said the South China Sea problem was not a China-ASEAN dispute and the agreement "should not affect China-ASEAN relations".
But, Singapore's Staits Times quoting an unnamed ASEAN diplomatic source said: "China is quite worried that ASEAN will make some sort of joint statement after arbitration decision comes out" and thus they have been wooing "ASEAN's most compliant members".
Four members of the 10-member ASEAN – the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei – have rival claims to parts of the South China Sea with China, which claims that virtually the entire sea belongs to it. China is the biggest trade partner of many ASEAN nations and China's maritime claims are the regional bloc's most contentious issue, as its members struggle to balance their claims against growing economic relations with Beijing.
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