Beijing, 7 August 2021 (TDI): Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended the 28th ASEAN regional formal (ARF) meeting via a video link. During the meeting, FM Wang urged the ASEAN nations to come together to maintain regional peace, stability, and security along with the practice of true multilateralism. Wang pointed out 5 security challenges to the region and asked the ASEAN states to jointly respond to these challenges.
Firstly Wang pointed out that the regional states need to collaborate to deal with the challenges caused by COVID19 and mentioned that vaccine cooperation between the ASEAN states is the key to fight the virus.
Secondly, FM Yi urged the need for cooperation to deal with the increasing non-traditional security challenges like climate issues, cybersecurity issues, terrorism, and transnational crimes in the region. Maintenance of ASEAN’s centrality and prevention of any bloc formation in the region is another challenge the states need to tackle, said Wang.
Defense of ASEAN’s key principle of non-interference and prevention from power politics are another two important challenges the region faces, said Wang. He also stated that countries should not willfully interfere with the internal affairs of other countries or seek their egoistic geopolitical agendas under the pretense of democracy.
Lastly, Wang focused on jointly addressing the regional issues, specifically the Korean, Myanmar, and SCS issues, and also cleared out China’s stance on these issues. In relevance to the issues of the Korean peninsula, Wang made China’s stance clear and mentioned that it would continue to promote the Peninsula in a balanced approach, including the development of peace mechanisms for the political solution of the problem.
Concerning the South China Sea issue Wang Yi mentioned that ‘China is ready to conclude the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC) that is effective, substantive and in line with international laws, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea’.
