VietNamNet Bridge – Two Australian experts on May 14 were highly critical of China’s infringement on Vietnam’s territorial waters.

Malcolm Cook, Dean of the School of International Studies at Flinders University declared that China’s actions run counter to the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties (DOC) in the East Sea as agreed upon between ASEAN and China in 2002.

China is acting recklessly and politically in the dispute by failing to comply with the signed agreements and is not acting in good faith by participating in a constructive dialogue to resolve the dispute peacefully, Cook says.

Meanwhile, Vietnam admirably has not undertaken any acts which could be construed as “provocative”, he added.

China’s deployment of the oil rig Haiyang Shiyou-981 prior to the 24th ASEAN Summit demonstrates the audacious disrespect it holds for other ASEAN nations, he concluded.

Elliot Brennan, a Non-Resident Research Fellow with the Institute for Security & Development Policy (ISDP)’s Asia Program, affirmed that China’s moves are extremely worrisome and disappointing as they have taken place in the context of favourable ongoing trade and investment bilateral negotiations and dialogues between China and Vietnam.

Brennan said that Vietnam and China should exercise restraint and wisdom over their conduct, and enter into good faith negotiations to avoid further escalating the conflict and devise mechanisms to deal with the issues appropriately.

Lucio Caracciloo, an Italian scholar who is also the Director Limes, Italian Review of Geopolitics said that China’s stationing of the oil rig Haiyang Shiyou-981 poses a serious and complicated threat towards regional security.

China’s recent acts not only represent an economic threat but also reveal its political motivation to show its contempt toward Asia and the US. He stressed that China’s provocative acts potentially could lead to dangerous moves in its games of power.

In other developments, Asia expert Gerhard Will from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin (SWP) said that China is mixing political motivations with economic motivations by placing its giant oil rig near Vietnamese waters.

He especially underscored the point that regional experts affirm that there are no huge reserves of oil in the area thereby China’s actions are surprisingly dubious in nature.

He reaffirmed that China’s ostensibly reckless and careless moves threaten efforts to deescalate the tension in the East Sea as well as the implementation of the DOC.

This is not the first time China has undertaken actions to implement its territorial claims through the “nine-dash line” he said, emphasising that China’s placement of the giant oil rig in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone is an undeniably clear violation of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982) and the DOC signed between ASEAN and China in November 2002.

Source: VOV