Opportunity for ASEAN to reassert its autonomy

The 2025 ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Retreat was convened on Sunday in Langkawi, Malaysia. The Retreat, with the theme "Inclusivity and Sustainability", is the first major meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year.

Under the chairmanship of Malaysia, the ASEAN foreign ministers had candid and in-depth discussions on ASEAN's priorities in 2025. Their wide-ranging joint statement issued after the meeting conveyed the ASEAN members' common stance on many issues, ranging from the South China Sea maritime disputes to the Ukraine crisis.

Over the past four years, the Joe Biden administration of the United States has exerted tremendous pressure on ASEAN in a bid to coerce it to jump onto its anti-China bandwagon, and the Philippines under the Ferdinand Marcos Jr government has sought to leverage an advantage by acting as a proxy of the US in the region. Portraying itself as a victim of China's "bullying", the Philippines tried to drive a wedge between the regional organization and China.

These external and internal factors have to some extent taken a toll on regional solidarity, stability and cooperation.

With a new US administration taking office on Monday, the organization will hopefully have the opportunity to better exercise its strategic autonomy in foreign affairs and uphold an independent stance on many burning issues of regional and international concern.

In the document, the ASEAN foreign ministers reiterated their strong commitment to upholding regionalism and multilateralism, welcomed the progress of the negotiations on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, vowed to play a greater role in fostering a stable and predictable environment through adherence to the principles of international law, mutual respect, and the peaceful resolution of maritime disputes, and underscored the importance of the full and effective implementation of the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea in its entirety.

The ASEAN stance accords with that of China, and, if acted upon, will be conducive to promoting the organization's cooperation with China to seek proper solutions on the South China Sea issues.

Besides, the ASEAN foreign ministers vowed to deepen cooperation under the ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan and the Republic of Korea) cooperation framework, and welcomed substantive progress in the implementation of the ASEAN Plus Three Cooperation Work Plan (2023-27).

While China, Japan and the ROK have been accelerating their efforts to mend ties in recent months, the ASEAN's strong support for a closer regional cooperation will help unleash the potential of the ASEAN Plus Three cooperation framework that is based on their structural complementarity and shared Asian values and culture.

Standing at a new starting point, ASEAN is now in a better position to understand that it has no reason not to keep good relations with its neighbors, including China, and that no external forces should be allowed to assume the center of the stage in Southeast Asia except the regional countries themselves.