Less than three hours after the ASEAN statement was released by the Malaysian Foreign Ministry, a spokeswoman retracted the document, saying that “urgent amendments” were needed. By the end of the evening, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had made his own statement refuting the contention that the South China Sea dispute was a sticking point between his country and the regional body as a whole.
“This isn’t an issue between China and ASEAN,” he said. “Cooperation between China and ASEAN is far greater than any specific discord, including the South China Sea dispute.”
That may be. China, after all, is ASEAN’s largest trading partner. One senior regional diplomat told TIME that, in the busy minutes after the ASEAN statement went out, Beijing had lobbied regional ministers to make the embarrassing backtrack. Beijing’s foreign-policy makers, he said, had specifically pressured Laos, which is this year’s ASEAN chair, to force the statement’s recall. (ASEAN requires consensus among all of its 10 members to issue any statement.)
“When the dragon roars, the little countries need to stay away from the fire coming out of its mouth,” says the diplomat. “We have no choice but to acknowledge this political reality.”
The ASEAN nations can hang together, or they can hang separately.