The tropical island of Hainan off the southern coast of China is as peaceful and idyllic a place you could wish for, far from the troubles of a noisy world. But when politicians, business figures, diplomats and academics met on the island this week for the Boao Forum for Asia, it was under the shadow of the war in Iran.
Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People’s Congress standing committee and the third most senior figure in the Communist Party, avoided any direct criticism of Donald Trump, who said on Wednesday he will be visiting Beijing on May 14th and 15th. But in his speech to the forum on Thursday, Zhao said power politics should be rejected in favour of economic development and that conflicts should be resolved through negotiation.
“The people of Asia, having endured the scourge of war and chaos, deeply understand the value of peace and stability,” he said.
Singapore’s prime minister Lawrence Wong opened his speech by identifying the impact of the wars in Ukraine and Iran on the rest of the world, as they drive up food and energy prices and disrupt supply chains. He noted this disruption coincided with a worrying breakdown of the institutions and norms that long anchored the global system.
READ MORE
“For decades, international law and multilateral rules provided guardrails for states’ behaviour. They did not eliminate conflict, but they tempered it and brought a measure of predictability to international relations,” he said.
“Today, those guardrails are weakening. International relations are increasingly shaped by geopolitical rivalry and zero-sum thinking. States feel less bound by rules, and more inclined to act whenever they have the power to do so. Small and middle-sized countries feel this most acutely. But even large powers will find that a world where the strong do as they please is ultimately more dangerous for all.”
Wong praised China’s commitment to multilateral institutions and called for Beijing to play a greater role in regional, plurilateral arrangements and to deepen its co-operation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which Singapore will chair next year. He suggested that China’s vast domestic market could be a powerful engine of growth, if it fulfils its commitment to boost domestic consumption, noting its increasingly dominant position in science and technology.
“China has placed science, technology and innovation at the centre of its development strategy. It is already at the forefront in key emerging areas, including digital and green technologies. More importantly, it is advancing innovation at scale – accelerating adoption and driving progress across industries. China is therefore well positioned not just to participate in the next wave of technological change, but to shape and lead this change” he said.
[ China and India show Trump that diplomacy can workOpens in new window ]
The Philippine ambassador to China, Jaime FlorCruz, endorsed what Zhao and Wong had to say about the need to uphold multilateralism in the face of fractious unilateralism. He added that the need for collaboration and multilateral co-operation was even more pronounced now “as we deal with what’s going on in the world, in Iran and other places”.
The war in Iran has prompted a partial rapprochement between the Philippines and China, which have been in an increasingly fractious standoff over a territorial dispute in the South China Sea. Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos has led a turn away from China since taking office, deepening military co-operation with the United States by giving American forces access to more bases and allowing them to deploy missile systems.
Most Asian countries rely on imported oil and gas, none more so than the Philippines, which this week granted Marcos emergency powers to suspend excise taxes in an effort to blunt the impact of price increases. Marcos said this week that in view of the impact of the war in Iran, he was open to resuming discussions with China about the joint development of an oil and gas project in a disputed area of the South China Sea.
“That’s something we’ve been talking about for a great deal, but territorial disputes are getting in the way of that,” he told Bloomberg News.
“Maybe this provides impetus for both sides to come to an agreement.”
Despite their heated rhetoric and occasional confrontations at sea, Manila and Beijing have contained their disagreement over islands in the South China Sea both lay claim to. And Marcos noted that they have always differentiated their territorial disputes from their trading relationship, which continues to work well.
“And they have not used this as somehow, they haven’t leveraged this in any way. In quite a contrary, they’ve been very helpful in terms of for example, fertiliser, for which we import a great deal of fertiliser from China,” he said.
Although Marcos avoided criticising Trump, he declined to offer support for the attack on Iran, saying simply that the Philippines never wants war.
“Our foreign policy is very simple: it’s peace and national interest,” he said.
“We’re watching, waiting, hoping and praying that this ends soon and that we go back to some kind of normal, whatever that normal will be.”
