The statement was issued by ASEAN member Malaysia on behalf of the bloc during a meeting to mark the 25th anniversary of relations between the 10-nation group and China. The meeting was held in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, in a region known for historically close trading links with the Southeast Asian countries to the south, including Myanmar, Laos and Thailand.
The group said recent developments in the disputed sea, where China is building artificial islands and constructing what it calls "defensive facilities" -- while the U.S. conducts naval patrols and reconnaissance flights in the name of freedom of navigation -- have raised concerns about a spillover clash. Those fears, the statement added, have "the potential to undermine peace."
"We stressed the importance of maintaining peace, security, stability, safety and freedom of navigation in and overflight above the South China Sea," the ASEAN foreign ministers said.
But in an about-turn even more startling, Malaysia led the way in issuing a sudden retraction, saying there were "urgent amendments to be made."
To some, such wavering was a testament to China's capacity to divide ASEAN members and corral its allies inside the bloc, such as Cambodia and Laos, into doing its bidding. "They backed down completely," said James Chin, director of the Asia Institute at the University of Tasmania, discussing the members' retraction.
In 2012, amid rows over the South China Sea, Cambodia prevented ASEAN from issuing a concluding common statement at the end of a summit, the first time in the group's history that it had failed to do so. Cambodia, which chaired the bloc at the time, was seen as acting as China's lackey.
China dismissed any notion that it had pressured ASEAN into a retraction at this month's gathering and played down the idea that the group could forge a common position on the disputed sea. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on June 15 that "all countries, including the 10 ASEAN members, are sovereign states where they make their own independent policy decisions."
OVERLAPPING CLAIMS China's territorial claims to the sea, a vital maritime route for an estimated $5 billion worth of trade, put it at odds with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, some of which also have overlapping claims with each other, while China and Indonesia have related overlapping claims around Indonesia's Natuna Islands. Countries such as the U.S., Japan and Australia have repeatedly called for freedom of navigation through the South China Sea, while China in turn has called for non-claimant countries to stay out of the region.
China has a free trade agreement with ASEAN and has become an increasingly pivotal trade partner for, and investor in, ASEAN countries in the past decade. Collectively, the group does more business with China than with any other country. Trade between the two sides has tripled over the past decade and grew 8.3% in 2014 to $480 billion, according to Chinese government figures.
Malaysia benefited last year from a hefty Chinese bailout of the troubled state fund 1MDB, which prompted suggestions that ASEAN's backtracking over its initial South China Sea statement was about Beijing calling in its diplomatic debts.
However, Chin at the University of Tasmania attributed the release of the ASEAN statement to "Malaysian incompetence." Meanwhile, unnamed diplomats present at the meeting told news agencies that Laos, the ASEAN chair, was pressured by China into asking for the statement to be withdrawn. Arrmanatha Nasir, a spokesman for the Indonesian government, described the statement as a "media guideline" rather than an official communique.
Despite conflicting versions of what was said at the meeting and what ASEAN intended to relay, regional observers say the fact that the first statement came about at all suggested a growing rift between ASEAN and China over the South China Sea. Some said the statement offered a hint that most Southeast Asian countries perceive a need to take a stronger, common stance on the issue.
Since the statement was retracted, several ASEAN members have said the initial draft was an agreed statement -- or at least, that it reflected the group's common position. Singapore, which co-chaired the meeting in its role as ASEAN's China dialogue relations coordinator, also appeared to disagree with the retraction. Its foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, failed to show up for a scheduled joint press conference with Chinese counterpart Wang Yi after the meeting.
Vietnam, which has a tense relationship with China over rival claims around islands in the South China Sea, said the initial statement reflected the agreed ASEAN position at the end of the meeting. It expressed concern at "the large-scale accretion and embellishment and construction of the reefs, the militarization of the artificial islands and actions of sovereignty claims that are not based on international law."
On June 16, the Philippines issued a statement that said the group's foreign ministers "had a candid exchange with the Chinese foreign minister in view of the recent developments," and that the group "expressed their serious concerns over recent and ongoing developments, which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and which may have the potential to undermine peace, security and stability in the South China Sea."
Bill Hayton, the author of "The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia," said that if Malaysia was opposed to the initial statement, "it would have tried to bury it." The fact that Singapore unilaterally released a summary of the foreign ministers' discussion "tells us that they wanted a strong statement, too," he added.
"What's remarkable is not so much that China wanted to suppress a strong statement on the South China Sea but that ASEAN was prepared to disrupt a major event -- the 25th anniversary of China-ASEAN relations -- in order to send a message to the Chinese government," Hayton said.
In contrast, China played up the historic significance of the anniversary meeting.
"The meeting has consolidated and expanded the consensus on cooperation between both sides and uttered the common voice of China and ASEAN countries to devote themselves to maintaining peace and stability in the region," Wang, China's foreign minister, said at the post-meeting press conference.
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