South China Sea tensions and economic cooperation topped the agenda during Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s state visit to Vietnam over the weekend. On Friday, Jokowi met his Vietnamese counterpart Vo Van Thuong in Hanoi, with subsequent state media reports claiming that the two leaders discussed closer cooperation on trade and investment and the importance … Read more
Last month at the conclusion of talks with senior Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) officials in Beijing, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson optimistically announced that the parties had agreed to “accelerate negotiations so as to strive to reach at an early date an effective and substantive” Code of Conduct (CoC) to govern their activities in … Read more
Advertisement Tomorrow, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will begin a three-day run of summits and meetings against a backdrop of intensifying frictions in the South China Sea. The disputes, which pit China’s expansive “nine-dash line” maritime claim against rival claims from four Southeast Asian claimants – Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei – … Read more