President Donald Trump’s trip through East Asia largely ignored curtailing the Chinese from assuming control over the South China Sea.
This week during President Donald Trump’s trip through East Asia one major issue has largely been forgotten: curtailing the Chinese military from assuming total control over the strategic South China Sea.
Trump arrived in Vietnam on Friday having just had a closed-door meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the South China Sea. Neither leader took any questions from the media following the meeting.
The issue is the elephant in the room, so to speak, not just for the U. S., but for a number of coastal East Asian nations.
The Chinese view the body of water as their historical territory and have strong armed regional governments in their sovereignty bids, many of which are decades old. Claims not just by the Chinese, but also by Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia, to various archipelagos, shoals and territorial waters have been in the works for years.
But the Chinese have built military installations and even have various construction projects under way in the South China Sea, a point President Xi made as recently as October while addressing the Communist Party Congress.
Ely Ratner, the Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Observer that while it may appear that Trump is disinterested in the issue, the administration is still developing a coherent policy on the South China Sea. What’s more, he said, the U. S. could be looking for a regional partner in helping counter Chinese expansionist goals.
“The administration is looking at Vietnam as a potential strategic partner in the region,” Ratner said. “They’re making an extra effort to visit with officials in Vietnam.”
Friday kicked off the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Danang, but U. S. officials are also meeting with their Vietnamese counterparts to hold bilateral talks on issues such as the South China Sea. Ratner pointed out Vietnam was the only stop on Trump’s Asia travel schedule where such discussions were being held and in two different cities of the same country, pointing to the idea Vietnam seems like a viable option in laying the future groundwork of a policy strategy regarding the South China Sea.
