CHINA SEEKS BAN ON OUTSIDER DRILLS

The draft also confirms earlier reports that China wants military drills with outside powers in the South China Sea to be blocked unless all signatories agree.

In addition, Beijing wants to exclude foreign oil firms by limiting joint development deals to China and South East Asia. Experts expect both elements to be strongly resisted by some ASEAN countries.

“That is unacceptable,” one Southeast Asian diplomat told Reuters, referring specifically to the suggested ban on military drills with countries outside the region.

In a statement sent to Reuters, China’s Foreign Ministry said negotiations on the code were confidential, and it could not comment on their content.

The next round of working level talks is expected to take place in Myanmar in the first quarter of next year, the Southeast Asian diplomat said.

In August, Chinese and ASEAN officials hailed the initial negotiating text as a milestone and a breakthrough when it was endorsed by the foreign ministers of ASEAN and China.

It will be negotiated over the coming year by senior ASEAN and Chinese officials and has not yet been released publicly.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang last month called for the pact to be sealed by 2021, a timetable some envoys and analysts are skeptical can be reached.

“There’s a lot of tough work ahead – that figure seems to have just been plucked from the air,” one senior Asian diplomat said.

The code builds on an earlier declaration on the South China Sea signed between ASEAN and China in 2002.

That document did not prevent the vital international trade route emerging as a regional flashpoint amid China’s military rise and its extensive program of island building on disputed reefs since 2014.

The United States and other regional powers including Japan and India are not part of the negotiations, but take a strong interest in the waterway that links Northeast Asia with the Middle East and Europe.

Several countries, including Japan, India, Britain and Australia, have joined the United States in gradually increasing naval deployments through the South China Sea. They are often shadowed by Chinese naval ships.

Carl Thayer, an expert on Vietnam’s military and diplomacy at Australia’s Defence Force Academy, said Hanoi was expected to prove a tough negotiator but would need support among other ASEAN members to hold a firm line against China.

The Philippines successfully challenged Beijing’s South China Sea claims in an international arbitration case in 2016, but has reversed policy under President Rodrigo Duterte, who has avoided confronting China as he seeks to secure billions of dollars of loans and investments for his infrastructure program.

The 19-page draft remains vague in key areas including its precise geographic scope, whether it will be legally binding and how disputes will be resolved.

Bonnie Glaser, a regional security expert at the Centre for International and Strategic Studies in Washington, said she believed China’s more controversial proposals would prove unacceptable to several key ASEAN members, as well the United States and its allies.

“People I have spoken to in the U.S. government say that it is clearest evidence yet that China wants to push the U.S. out of the region,” she said.