SINGAPORE — With major world powers stepping up their engagement with South-east Asia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will have to take on a bigger role to create a robust rules-based regional order, said a panel of geopolitical experts yesterday.

“The Barack Obama administration has devoted more attention to South-east Asia than any other United States administration since the Vietnam War … It is an explicit policy and it started before the world started paying attention to China’s increasing assertiveness in Asia,” said Dr Susan Shirk, a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego.

Prof Shirk, a former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, was speaking during a panel discussion on Major Power Interests and Contestation in South-east Asia during the Regional Outlook Forum 2016 organised by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

She pointed out that China’s intentions in the regional maritime domain are uncertain, especially since there is a gap between Beijing’s rhetoric of peaceful development and the construction of artificial islands, as well as its possible deployment of military assets in the South China Sea.

“The question is how South-east Asia and, in fact, all of Asian countries, can encourage China to pursue a (regional) policy that is aimed at providing a public good of cooperation, freedom of navigation and respect for international law,” she said.

“What the US hopes to see, and what I think South-east Asia hopes to see, is that this multilateral architecture (based around ASEAN) can be strengthened in a way that both integrates China and helps shape China’s intentions and behaviour in future.”

Prof Shirk said the options that could be considered include putting in place voting rules when ASEAN makes decisions, so that countries that have close relations with China would not be able to block consensus in the grouping.

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than US$5 trillion (S$7.1 trillion) in ship-borne trade passes every year.

It has built seven man-made islands on reefs in the Spratly Islands, including a 3km-long airstrip on Fiery Cross Reef.

Recent test flights of Chinese aircraft, as well as the previous sighting of military equipment on the newly created islands, have sparked fears of militarisation as well as curtailment of freedom of navigation in the region.

Another panellist, Professor Jia Qingguo, Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, said cultivating ASEAN is top priority for Beijing, and both sides should arrive at some institutional arrangements to settle disputes, such as a code of conduct in the South China Sea. “China and ASEAN should take code of conduct negotiations more seriously and strike an early conclusion,” he said.

“I believe the code of conduct is in the best interests of all parties. We (in the region) have spent too much time and energy and at too much cost to engage in a territorial dispute.”

Prof Jia said that China has a track record of settling territorial disputes with neighbours as it has resolved most of its land border problems through negotiations.

Dr Masashi Nishihara, president of the Research Institute for Peace and Security in Japan, and also a member of the panel, added that Tokyo has also been actively reaching out to ASEAN, as evidenced in how Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had visited all ASEAN capitals within three years of taking office.

He said that Tokyo has always supported a rules-based regional and international order.

Commenting on the envisaged outcome of the US-ASEAN Commemorative Summit to be held in California next month, Prof Shirk “hopes that ASEAN leaders, together with President Obama, could reaffirm and clarify the normative consensus on the public good of a rules-based order for Asia, freedom of navigation, and resolution of territorial issues on the basis of international law”.