 Right, well look, let's get started. For those of you who have the good fortune not to have previously met me, I'm Richard Rigby. I run the A&U China Institute. But I spent my first five years in DFAT in Japan, and I'm also a bit of an India groupie. So Indo-Pacific just suits me to a tee. Before we really get underway, though, I've been asked to do a bit of advertising. Outside, you'll notice some 50 or so copies of this Asia Policy Journal, of which the A&U and the NSC have recently become associated more closely. They're free. And I probably don't need to say anything else. But also includes the proceedings of a round table on non-claimant perspectives on the South China Sea disputes, the first of the speakers, which is one Rory Medcalf I need to say no more. So I mean, this is traditionally the death session, or at least sleep. And but I don't think it will be because of the nature of the session, because this is really where the rubber does hit the road. And we've already had a teaser courtesy of John and of Alan's response to get some sense of the issues that we're going to be discussing, which should remind you are managing security tensions in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, which I suppose begs the question as to the degree to which they can be managed. But anyway, that's what we have to think about. What are the options for managing South China Sea tensions? Senkaku Dyaou seems to have relaxed a little bit in the last year or so, but how much, what prospects are there for managing them further? And more importantly, what are the prospects for CBMs, confidence-building measures in managing tensions in East Asian waters and in the wider Indo-Pacific? These are all subjects on which I have a whole lot of views. And knowing that, Rory said that I could moderate this session, which is the best way of ensuring that I didn't actually say anything very much at all. He's a cunning dog, that Rory. On the other hand, though, he's also selected an absolutely excellent panel. And you want to read more about them. You have the bio data, but three old friends and one new, one Merit Professor Carl Thief from the ADF Academy, Professor Jing Dong Yan from University of Sydney, Dr. Hitoshi Nass from the ANU. And also now from the ANU, although former DFAT colleague Ms. Marina Tsirbas. So without further ado, I shall turn over to the speakers. Usual rules, 10 minutes. Please, certainly no more than 12. And I will hold you that, but I'm sure you'll be extremely well disciplined and won't need my intervention. So I think we start with you, Carl. Thank you. As a former soccer referee, I start my watch now. Yes, OK. Managing tensions in the South China Sea. I need the, oh, it's on here. OK. I want to thank the ANU National Security Council for inviting me to present here. I'm happy to see the Chancellor talk about spreading the word to other institutions and bringing them in. I spent 42 years working on regional security issues and starting off with Murray McClain's reference to the January 1974 China-Vietnam attack in the Amphitite Group in the Swatlings. Since my retirement at the end of 2010, I presented 38 papers in the South China Sea to 14 conferences. Just got back from Hanoi. So it's a daunting chess to put it all down in 10 minutes. I'm going to look at some problems of definitions, options for managing tensions, and confidence building measures. These are part of the remit. I've dropped out the East China Sea. Otherwise, I wouldn't finish. Some problems with definitions. We heard this morning, and we continue to read in the press that China, there's land reclamation going on out there. That's an absolutely false characterization of what occurred. There is no land feature that has lost its land by wind or water erosion. China is built on either rocks or low tide elevations, so let's be clear about that. They're dredging coral, destroying coral reef, going to the seabed and constructing and concreting artificial islands. They're also the subject of the orbital tribunal's views on. Frame of navigation, going to be critical. Let me separate the Obama administration at one end, moving over to the Defense Department and then praise US Pacific Command and the US Navy on the other. China has not promulgated baselines in the Spratly Islands. It claims military alert zones that are ambiguous, security zones that are ambiguous, threatening Chinese warships in the area as ambiguous, or worse, the territorial not sea waters within its nine-dash line. Freedom of navigation is a bandaid addressing a hemorrhage. It does not address the real issue. And the US has mismanaged in China the three warfares of information warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare are taking away our lunch because we're not characterizing what's going on. And the operations that the US Navy has run both there and up in the Paracel Islands have sent confused messages. It doesn't address the real problem. And finally, militarization. We heard it today. Both the United States and China accuse each other of militarization and China calls US patrols, the carrot exercises, et cetera, as militarization. It needs to be defined. And I'm calling. I've done it in Hanoi. And I call here for the ASEAN ISIS, for the CISCAP, for think tanks, for everybody to get together and begin to work on defining militarization, what would be offensive and upset regional norms and security using the 2002 definition in the Declaration of Conduct of Parties. It's a spectrum of activities on the one hand, which Vietnam has done. They militarized by putting a handful of naval personnel in uniform with side arms on little bits and pieces across the island. They built a 550-meter airstrip, which has been there for years. And then you move through to the Philippines, et cetera. That's what China calls its militarization. They built helipads. They may have put radio communications in. Then you get to the middle area. What is a port? What is a jetty? What is a dock? What is an airstrip? What is radar and helipads? They served dual youths. And then what is militarization, Mark Valencia asked if military ships participate in an HADR, exercise, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and stay for a couple of weeks before they go home. So what is militarization? And then at the other end, in common English, it includes preparations for conflict, making war. So from stationing uniformed armed military personnel, constructing bunkers, gun emplacements, defensive naval guns, dual-use docks, jetty's airships, radar communication, signals intelligence, to long-range radar, electronic warfare equipment, armed Coast Guard vessels, fishing militia armed, warships, aerial reconnaissance with surface-to-surface or anti-submarine missiles, amphibious forces in craft that could operate from these islands, self-propelled artillery, anti-aircraft missiles, surface-to-surface missiles, cruise missiles, jet fighters, bombers, and the Chinese airship takes it. I think one American admiral said it's 915 meters short for a 747 to take off, and it's just right for a B-52 bomber, but not enough for a space shuttle. That's how big one of the Chinese airships is. So we must define that, and I say somehow determine a red line when we think the balance is being tipped, because so far China's militarization has not proceeded down the right. The foundations may have been leveled, but none of the offensive weaponry that I've just listed at the end of that little paragraph have been installed yet. So now is the time to try to preserve the status quo. So options for managing temper. At one level, there's a US-China action reaction cycle that led me to believe things are gonna get worse before they get better. That every US freedom of navigation patrol, which were promised within keep and scope and intensity, will invite a Chinese response. Maybe even a potential confrontation at sea between Coast Guard and US Navy, between Fisherman and US Navy. This must be handled by them in military to military talks. China has long said that close-in surveillance is one of the three obstacles to US relationship. They've come up with cues, they've gotta work out other arrangements when their ships meet other than ordering them away. Next, we had it discussed this morning. No suggestions between now, April, May, and the middle of the year when the arbitral tribunal is gonna make its decision, but once it's made, we've heard it's supposed to be immediately forcible. It's not subject to appeal, but it has no law enforcement mechanisms. And we can't prejudge what those judges are going to decide. But when loser draw, the like-minded community that we've been describing is committed to supporting international law in those decisions. And therefore, we must stand firm, I think, on that. And that should be the basis for diplomacy and concerted action by the international community. If certain definitions and decisions are made. So I call for a diplomatic international community United Front. I'm gonna talk about, I also said stressing ASEAN centrality. The United States cannot build a coalition and operate in Southeast Asia without, by ignoring ASEAN. And ASEAN is not going to hedge and join the United States. It's a dialogue organization that's committed to what I once called foolish consistency, the hobgoblin of little minds where the holy grail are trying to get this code of conduct. But nonetheless, that's the only game in time. And I'll indicate later, they're getting sharper and more concerned. And there was just a news flash that Malaysia's gonna meet with Australia and the Philippines and Vietnam to discuss action. So a nascent quadrilateral here. But ASEAN, so it shouldn't be us versus China. It should be us building up ASEAN in the region to support the rules and norms while the US and China get together on the military to military side. And finally, coordination and multi-national diplomacy, multi-lateral diplomacy, including the capacity building that was called on by the Japanese Admiral this morning in ASEAN and other multi-lateral forums. Very quickly, we just had last November, the ASEAN China summit, the ASEAN US summit, the East Asia summit, the special summit from US ASEAN Sunnylands, ASEAN Ministry of Retreat. I call on these because I've analyzed the wording and that's just is to make a point. They all agree on the following. If you had a panel and said, we believe in freedom of navigation and overflight and you didn't press a button and say it was China, you'd be wrong. That's immediately in the first paragraph. All those countries agree on peace, security and stability of the region, freedom of navigation and overflight, implementation of the Declaration on Conduct of Parties, the conclusion of a code of conduct, self-restraint and the exercise of activities to upset regional security, the non-use of threat and use of force, peaceful resolution of dispute, international law including UNCLUS, so we can all go home and have an agreement. But that's not the case. If we look very carefully, you have ASEAN China, ASEAN US, compare what they agreed and didn't disagree on, look at the East Asia Summit where ASEAN's got both powers there together. What do they agree on in that statement? You get the Sunnyland Summit, what was special about that, that upgraded what was done with the US and finally the latest ASEAN ministerial meeting retreat. Here the ASEAN US Summit added in addition to what was agreed on, the focus on maritime security and safety. And what's in yellow is included in the next slide on the ASEAN ministerial retreat, full respect for legal and diplomatic processes, that's Philippines arbitration, other lawful uses of the sea, I take it that's military going through obeying international law, unimpeded lawful maritime commerce, non-militarization, that's in both, address common challenges in the maritime domain. And you can read in from those vague statement what ASEAN in the United States might have just thought about that. When we get to the AMM retreat, the most recent, ASEAN has increasingly pushed its language towards a expeditious conclusion of a code of conduct and substantive development of it. And we can do that in question and answer. The ministers remain seriously concerned over recent, the ministers, all of them. In the past it's that next expression, some ministers expressed agreement, we took note of that. But now all ministers are seriously concerned over recent ongoing developments and took note of the concerns expressed by some ministers on land reclamation, escalation, which have eroded trust and confidence, eroded tensions. This is why ASEAN, as a diplomatic community, needs to be supported. Now in terms of confidence building measures, already in 2002, the parties pledged themselves to explore ways for building trust and confidence. Any suggestion of confidence building measures outside the DOC framework, in my opinion, are not likely to fly with ASEAN itself. They're committed to this path and that's an outside intrusion. But if cues and other such confidence building measures can be built, they can also be applied. But asking ASEAN to reinvent the wheel after 2002 is too possible. Next I was invited by the Philippines to the joint working group ASEAN China seminar on implementing the DOC. And there the discussion focused around how to operationalize this paragraph. To exercise self-restraint and the conduct activities that would complicate escalate disputes and affect peace and stability. That should be the baseline, the litmus test of all so-called land reclamation military activities since that date in the South China Sea. Does Vietnam's expansion of 10% of a coral reef constitute a threat to regional security where it does several thousands of acres, concrete runway upset regional peace and security? Among others, and that's what's not been put in here, the use of fire hoses, ramming ships and other activities. What's not listed among others is what ASEAN and particularly the Philippines are trying to operationalize to get that down on paper. Now to build trust and confidence, they have four areas in light of recent developments. There are some scope for ASEAN to press China. And there's some scope in multilateral institutions, ARF, the ADMM plus to do likewise. But that ASEAN states should hold dialogue and exchange views. Yes, they've done that with China, but they should now begin to focus more and more on the activities that have caused them concern. Talk about queues, talk about relations of aircraft, Philippine aircraft fly over, they're blitzed with electronic beams, they're told to get out of the area. Just in your main treatment out of fishermen and every week you find Vietnamese fishermen being either assaulted or murdered. Notifying on a voluntary basis, parties of impending joint and combined military exercises. I don't think China's doing that, that should be done. And also that Philippines and Vietnam may be doing joint exercises so they could begin to promulgate that. Exchange information on a voluntary basis of relevant information. And here I think that could be pressed to what are you doing on the reefs this week, next week and the week after. Cooperative activities under the DOC include marine environmental protection and obligation under on-cloth, marine scientific research. Well I guess a non-starter would be to look at coral reef destruction because China claims they've done perfect studies and it's not happening, but nonetheless that would be an area. The one working group that has not been set up under the DOC, there are five areas, only four working groups, is on safety of navigation and communication at sea. So ASEAN needs to raise that in priority and get that established and its dialogue partners need to press. Search and rescue China claims that's what the airfields are for, combating transnational crime. Finally, in my conclusion, once again we must support ASEAN's centrality. We can't make it Australia, Japan, US, ganging up on China. We should reinforce the regional security architecture, both ASEAN and ASEAN Plus in its addition. We need to define specifically militarization. So we're clear about what is, so far no one has gone and neither, no officials on either side have gone, transparency by all claimants that I've gone over. Management of US, China, military and military encounters as a result of freedom of navigation patrols, mobilized the international community. We must prepare for that to support whatever the arbitral tribunal decides and preserve the status quo. Prevent a red line from being crossed and prevent it from moving beyond the midpoint of dual use to military use. Thank you. Thank you very much, Carl. I'll vigorous, clear and pretty much on time and worth every minute of it. So without any further ado, we'll straight on to Professor Jinggong, Yuan, Yuan Zhang. Well, let me begin by thanking the National Security College at ANU for the invitation. I think some of my points have already been mentioned by Carl. So I will reiterate some of these maybe from a different perspective. I see this territorial dispute and overall in South China Sea, East China Sea, three sets of conflict in dispute. The first is, of course, with regard to Spratly and Paracel, especially with Spratly, South China Sea, pretty much six states and seven parties. They all have claims and dispute over territorial dispute. And this is not something new. I mean, it's basically since the early 1970s, if you go back and the Chinese and the Vietnamese, you know, in the 50s, they mentioned their sovereign claims there. What is different this time around is because the, I think, increasing recognition of the maritime resources and access to those resources, control of those resources for economic development, also for security reasons when you think about energy supplies and transportation and in the morning panels, some of these issues have been covered. Now, also with regard to, pretty much in the first question, with regard to the first question, you know, what can we do, you know, because land reclamation have been done. There really is not real sort of good options, but still, you know, we need to develop different options and then certainly from the perspective of respect and also preserving existing rules, rule-based order there. So one thing I can think of is, I don't know if China, ASEAN, can basically go back to 2002 in DOC and then to not only that, but also going back further because the post-Cold War conflict, the first-round conflict, pretty much in the early 1990s and mid-90s, a mischief incident, but then the latter half of 1990s, China and the Philippines and China, ASEAN, developed some common interests and then resulting in the 2002 declaration. So what would be useful is to exam that period of time, you know, what were the conditions at the time that enabled these claiming states to, you know, agreeing to peaceful resolution, at least to have the options to, you know, develop some options to manage the problems. Now, the second round, of course, you will go back again to a few years ago, 2008 or 2009, that's again the conflicts basically were brought up to the open. I don't know, I mean, the international law and clause on one hand provides a framework of, you know, how to define and your national territories, exclusive economic zones, but also I think N-Clause amplifies the importance of sovereignty. So therefore, you know, 2009, this requirement for reporting for, you know, different claiming states basically highlighted, amplified the dispute among various claiming states. And then you think about the leadership transition, you know, nationalism, all the rest is very difficult for all these claiming states, you know, any one of them to sort of take the lead to de-escalate because, you know, for fear of being seen as selling out national interest and not standing up to protect national interest. Now external parties, what would be the part, in addition to ASEAN centrality, I think that's very important because at the moment, because ASEAN really cannot and, you know, express a unified voice with regard to the dispute. I mean, this most recent summit seemed to be a little bit stepped forward, but if you look at before, there did not seem to be unified voices so that centrality was not really played out. Now with regard to the U.S. position, of course that one has to think about the larger contacts of U.S.-China relations and the competition for regional primacy. And I can see here the U.S. dilemma in how it project, interject itself because obviously it has aligned commitment, it has the commitment to security, assistant to the weaker party, so it has to act in a way which in turn would be perceived by the Chinese as biased toward the other claimant states. And likewise for China as well to because of the nationalist fever. But I think from a longer perspective because China has for this, for many, many decades, claims sovereignty, night dashed line, but in specific logistical terms, before the land reclamation, for the occasion, really China could not enforce in a relatively difficult position to enforce its claim. So that I think motivates the land reclamation which triggered again the concern of the war is. But here I think the tensions is not any immediate conflict if you again compare 2009 to 2012. There you had many incidents, cutting off the table, arrest the fishermen, all the harassment and things going on. But in the last two years that seemed to be dissipated not as frequent as before. But the tension is what has been done on the ground, on islands or features, would affect many claimant states, security, consideration, the perception. So I think managing tension is first and foremost is to have a better understanding and the claims and what would be the best sort of a way to manage this from escalating to a real conflict. Now interestingly in the China-Japan sort of interaction over Delhi and Sankaku, of course 2012 nationalization and trigger Chinese reaction. So we had tension escalating for the next two years. But recently again, I think that tension has de-escalated especially when you look at the 2014 and 15 to two meetings between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Abe Sengzo. Of course, there are multiple reasons for de-escalation. One is both sides pretty much in the way it's accomplished what it intended or unintentionally want to achieve. So there's the nationalization, so further affirmation of the sovereignty over Delhi and Sankaku from Japan's perspective. And then the Chinese maritime law enforcement, more regular controls in and around the island also satisfy Chinese sort of claiming that this is a defect also. This is our territory. So we establish routine patrol and the ADIC, the Air Defense Identification Zone also is part of that. But there are larger, I think, context which was mentioned in the previous panel. It's basically the economic ties interest between these two countries. I mean, this is over $300 billion bilateral trade arrangement, a lot of Japanese investment in China, a lot of Chinese students studying in Japan. Basically last two years, Chinese tourists contributed to maybe the slowing down of Japanese further decline by spending a lot of money and going to Japan in millions of Chinese tourists there. But most fundamentally, I think it's the concern or understanding that without some channels of sort of dialogue and communication, more routine and regular sort of interactions between the law enforcement units from both countries and maybe even maritime self defense force in Chinese naval force could trigger or incident that is not something both country would like to see. So there's both economic interest but also the interest of somehow managing this problem. So that probably explain somewhat. Now, finally, I have just CVMs. Again, this point has been some of the points mentioned by Carl already. In the US-China context, of course over the years if you look at it since the late 1990s when the first sort of indication of a greater interaction in conflict between Chinese Navy and the American forces in the West Pacific led to the agreement of the so-called maritime military consulate agreement, CAA of 1998. And there are other sort of defense consulate dialogues and so forth. But in recent years, 2014 and 2015, the two additional MOUs on the air and sea encounter to avoid accidents. So I think as the Admiral mentioned this morning is, well, at the national level, maybe when you read the media, you seem to be really worried, you know, all of these interactions and very strong statement. The Americans would argue the war will sail and will fly to wherever interaction law allows. But actually in operational terms, I think both sides have been rather responsible and cautious and careful. Now, in addition to the bilateral U.S. China, there are other arrangements such as a peace, sort of a code for a planned encounter at sea. There are other international agreement that could be used as sort of the guideline for introducing enhancing competence building measures. If we follow CBM straight to the letters, of course you need greater transparency, advance notification and self-restraint in many aspects there. So I think one thing that is missing, I'm sorry, just to clarify. So in the China-Japan context, there need to be more mail-to-mail consultation because years ago I wanted to do a paper on China and Japan, sort of security, sort of a cooperation and halfway it gave up. It was really because you have to wait for a few years for a poor visit and another five years for a chief of defense visit. So it's kind of a difficult to go on. I think that needs to be brought on the agenda. I noticed in the last years, both the agreement between the two governments who start to implement and initiate security dialogue, including in the consultation between the two military or the Chinese military and self-defense force. So I just stop here. It's just three, my quick response to the question. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Yan, for those good and constructive thoughts. Now we'll turn to Dr. Shitojinasu, who is relevantly from the Centre for Military and Security Law. So over to you. Thank you, Richard. As someone who was born and raised in Japan and educated in Australia, I'm extremely pleased to be given this opportunity to address in this event. And I thank Professor Metcalf and his team for kindly extending the invitation to me for this opportunity. And also, I thank the Japanese Embassy for their hospitality. So because I work at the law school, obviously, I'm going to talk about this issue from a legal perspective. But I won't be going into the details of the legal analysis, but I will just highlight some of the legal issues and legal perspectives to look at how we can manage and ultimately resolve those maritime tensions. So even though we are talking about maritime tensions in this event, at the core of those security tensions lies the territorial dispute in East Asia. Many of those islands are subject to the dispute between different countries. And that raises an issue in terms of the ownership of those islands and maritime delimitation or maritime zones those islands could generate and so on. But at least one of the important root causes of this dispute nowadays actually is found in the 1951 San Francisco peace treaty. This is simply because that is that treaty, whereby Japan renounced their claims and titles over those islands, but without specifying to whom or without specifying which particular features, maritime features, were actually subject to territorial acquisition by Japan at the time. All of the territorial disputes are hardly political, and that means that they are not easily amenable to any diplomatic or political settlement. So that means the only way out for those disputing states is the third party acquisition. So on that basis, as I understand it, the key to the management of those tensions is threefold. First, there is a need to create the politicized space where a specific technical aspect of the dispute can be managed or resolved. And second, reduce the political incentives to engage in destabilizing conduct. And third, hopefully somehow, generate political incentives to move towards third party adjudication of those disputes. So from this perspective, from taking into account that this is the steps that we should be taking in order to manage and resolve the dispute, the first starting point is then, what are the specific technical aspects we can resolve? And this is important from a legal perspective because there are a lot of technical questions to be resolved in relation to those territorial disputes in the first place and also the maritime disputes. So in order to understand the actual legal status of those islands or maritime features that they are disputing about, we need to ask a whole variety of questions, such as, are they permanently above the sea level at the high tide? If that is the case, are they capable of human habitation? If that is not the case, then it's a low tide elevation. Then the question is, are they actually subject to some sort of territorial acquisition by the parties? The jurisprudence so far developed not conclusively, but largely indicates that if they are low tide elevations, then they are not subject to territorial acquisition. So that means there's no state can actually claim a territorial title of low tide elevations. If that is the case, given that the many of the features that they are disputing about, low tide elevations, perhaps they might be actually disputing for nothing. So, there are a variety of ways we can settle those legal questions. Of course, the Philippines arbitration against China is one way, it's only one of many legal options available and there are many of those. But here I highlight one of those options which not many people actually mentioned or even think about. As I said, the San Francisco Peace Treaty is the root cause of those disputes. And quite interestingly, that treaty also has this clause which allows any of the parties, any of the signatory parties to this treaty to refer the matter to the ICJ unilaterally. So that means that you don't have to secure a consent of China in order to request or ask for the clarification of the legal status of those islands before the ICJ. And certainly the original signatories such as Vietnam and the Philippines has this legal option. And as I said, this is only just one of many legal options available. And I'm happy to talk about more other options if you're interested in. Just briefly about the East China Sea dispute. It is very important to understand the differences between the South China Sea dispute and East China Sea dispute. And as I understand, our next speaker, Marina would be talking more about the differences. So I wouldn't be going into details of that, but it is important to be aware of those differences in the thing about the different approaches to Taik. But this remains the same. Still it's a territorial dispute. And therefore the only way out, as I said at the beginning, is a third-party adjudication. There is no way they can settle this dispute by political or diplomatic means. But that's a long-term solution. More immediately, particularly from the Japanese perspective, there's been growing concerns about the increased maritime militia activities undertaken in the East China Sea region. And there is a concern that the activities may be creating this gray zone situation. And that is a very acute security concern for the Japanese government at this moment. But even though the adoption and passing of a new security legislation in September last year is encouraging, it does not specifically address this particular issue of gray zone situation. So there may be a further need to make an amendment to the security legislation to fix this issue and close the loop holes that can be exploited by any Chinese maritime militia. Now I conclude my presentation with this slide, just talking about confidence-building measures. Because I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a really policy person, not I can't really talk much about the importance of the order options available in terms of confidence-building measures. But I thought this quote from Confucius actually tells us something about how we should be rethink about our tactics and approach to this issue. It is of course important that we approach this issue from our perspective and pursue our national interest. And we do so with respect while giving a due consideration to the interest of the regional security and international security. But at the same time, perhaps we should be giving the same or perhaps more due consideration to the legitimate security interests of China as well in thinking about this issue. And particularly in terms of freedom of navigation, as I understand it, their concern is the maritime naval activities in the South China Sea. And there might be some legitimate reasons for it. So perhaps if we take that into account, there might be actually need to think about creating some special legal regime that applies in the South China Sea. And the law of the sea convention itself envisages the regional states in the semi-enclosed sea like the South China Sea to cooperate in order to resolve these kind of disputes. It's quite, I was quite pleased to hear many reference to the rule-based regional order. And that is very important. But the law doesn't stay static. As a lawyer, it is always important to understand how the law actually change and evolves. Law can change and does evolve over the course of years. And the national interest, particularly security interest, are the primary drivers of those changes. So if we take into account those interests, perhaps there might be a need to actually change the law in this specific geographical realm and think about what sort of a new legal regime can be put in place through the negotiations and the diplomatic negotiations between the parties involved in those disputes. Thank you. Thank you very much, Hitoshi, for that very enlightening presentation. It's clear the San Francisco Peace Treaty does have a good deal to answer for, because it's also problematical that neither of the two claimants to being China were present on the occasion. But it's nice to see a gentleman of Japan referring to the master of 10,000 generations, Confucius, so maybe common Confucian values might offer one possible way forward. So thanks. Last but certainly not least, Marina. Thank you, Richard. And good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's certainly a privilege to be here in the esteemed company of my fellow participants. I think after listening to them that they've actually solved the South China Sea issue or come as close to putting forward some concrete recommendations on how to manage the tensions there. Many very good ideas, and I hope I can add to those. When I looked at the topic that we'd been given more closely, I thought perhaps it would be useful to spend a little bit of time talking about the differences in the situations between the East China Sea and South China Sea. And perhaps that might point to some of the factors that have assisted in managing tensions or could assist in managing tensions in both of those regions. In summary, essentially the differences range across strategic, legal and practical. In the East China Sea, we have essentially two players, a dispute over territory, a third party direct role in respect of the US's role. The legal issues are simpler and the practical issues are simpler. I'm summarizing what I'm going to tell you. In the South China Sea, the complexity of the legal issues is much greater. There's a conflation of the issues of sovereignty and jurisdiction. There are several players which have taken actions to unilaterally try to shore up their claims and excuse the pun on that. When viewed as a whole over the last few decades, the scope and scale of the land reclamation activity that China has recently undertaken is unparalleled. The interests of non-claimant states in the area to the international security of the region and the security of the sea lanes of communication. And the series of unknowns and assumptions relating to, for example, the prospectivity, the resources in the seabed or the resources in the water column as well. There's a series of unknowns and assumptions and a lack of trust in the South China Sea and others before us have said a lot about the military and strategic side. So I'm going to speak to this principally through the prism of international law as the previous speaker has done, but also through the prism of the rules-based global order. So in terms of what would be helpful to summarise quickly, I think following the processes set out in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea for articulating claims in a methodical and systematic way by all of the claimant states would be useful. I think avoiding measures which raise tensions or which unilaterally or illegally seek to buttress claims would be useful. I think creating an environment that is conducive to the settlement of the competing claims and asking what are the external drivers that are actually making the situation more pressurised and are any of those external drivers able to be removed is also a question that might be useful. So turning to the differences, in the East China Sea context in respect of the Senkaku Daiyu, the situation involves essentially a difference of views about rights to what are indisputably islands or land or territory. So although, of course, China and Japan have not delimited their maritime boundary zones, either the exclusive economic zone or the continental shelf in the East China Sea and there are points of friction over that, fundamentally, we're talking about features that neither of the parties dispute are land and the rules around sovereignty are those associated with land. There are islands over which Japan exercises effective administrative control and has done for some time. And secondly, there's only two countries in disagreement. While Japan, I understand, doesn't acknowledge that there is a dispute, China maintains a claim. So there's two significant players with modern naval capabilities involved in that scenario with competing claims. The fewer strategic players, in a sense, makes it perhaps easier to manage than the South China Sea context. The third direct play, and I make them a direct play in this scenario, by virtue of a treaty relationship is the United States, which clarified in 2013 that the islands fall under the administrative control of Japan and article five of the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty and that it opposed actions directed at challenging that administrative control. That, to a certain extent, I think de-escalated tensions for a period, whether that's a hiatus or a long-term de-escalation, is hard to know. Turning to the South China Sea, however, there are a range of disputes, and I'm just going to take a little bit of time to talk about these, because I think that understanding the complexity and the nature of the claims and the issues involved and avoiding a conflation of them can only help in terms of the overall narrative and analysis of what is helpful to the situation. So in the South China Sea, we have disputes over ownership or sovereignty of land or put differently territorial claims, disputes or disagreements as to the status of features in waters of the sea. That is, whether they are legally speaking islands, sea or something in between like a rock, and correspondingly the extent to which these features generate maritime jurisdictions, such as a territorial sea, an exclusive economic zone or a continental shelf. Of these, from the perspective of strategic space, obviously the territorial sea is the most important because it involves the greatest capacity to regulate maritime navigation, subject to the right of innocent passage. Continental shelves, which relate to rights to accessing the seabed resources or hydrocarbons by and large, have pretty much nothing to say on the issue of regulation of maritime traffic in the waters above them. And there does tend to be a conflation in the rhetoric of some of the claimant states as well of these issues. I think they're relying on the concept of constructive ambiguity. If they keep it vague, they can kind of claim as much as possible. So coming from a legal background, I also tend to assume too much that there's an appreciation that sovereignty is not the same as jurisdiction. That is to say that, well put crudely, sovereignty is something like ownership, jurisdiction is something like a license to regulate. For example, to allow exploitation of certain resources. It's not a license to control everything. In addition to those differences, there is the fact that a number of states have unilaterally taken steps to shore up their claims. For example, if we're talking about the Spratly features and there's a number of features contested here, mainly the peril cells and the Spratlys are the ones that attract the most attention, but there's Scarborough Shoal and others, which might be worth a mention. But the last I read, Vietnam had occupied, I use the phrase, not in the legal sense, 22 low tide elevations or features in the Spratlys. If we're keeping score, the Philippines had occupied nine, Malaysia eight, Taiwan one and China has come lately to it, occupying seven. So in a sense, there's a number of states out there doing this. There are questions, I suppose, not just about jurisdiction, about what you're entitled to do in a zone over which there are competing claims prior to that claim being settled. So the issues are much more complex than in the East China Sea. There are more strategic players and there are differing strategic players depending on which particular package of features you're referring to. If it's the peril cells, it's a different group of claimant states. If it's the Spratlys, depending on which Spratly feature you're talking about, there are different groups of claimant states and so on. The one common feature is that China maintains some type of claim over all of them. But whether it is a claim to sovereignty over a land feature or a maritime zone isn't clear and hasn't been made clear. China hasn't clarified, as Carl said, the precise nature of its claim in the South China Sea by designating baselines or officially claiming maritime zones from islands or proactively clarifying which of the features are islands. So the nine dashed line in and of itself is not a valid means of articulating maritime rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. On top of the claims is the fact that this is a theater in which there is strategic rivalry between the US and China and it is also an area that much of our trade passes through. So Australia and other states internationally and regionally have a legitimate interest in the safety of the major sea lands of communication in that part of the world and in the maintenance of peace and stability in the South China Sea as well. But in respect of the competing claims, Australia's official position is that the territorial is that it does not take sides on the issue of sovereignty or on the territorial and maritime disputes and calls on states to resolve these peacefully in accordance with international law, which is a common theme I think across the panel. I think that's an appropriate and even handed position for a country that isn't a claimant state but is part of UNCLOS, which I consider to be one of the best examples of an inclusive normative rules-based instrument that is part of the rules-based global order. And here I'll take issue with something that Alan Dupont said earlier. I think the rules-based global order evolves. So I don't think that all of the suite of instruments or rules that were set up post-World War II are necessarily static or need to remain static. Many countries, including Australia, have traditionally been at the forefront of facilitating and supporting expansion of international architecture, particularly in the economic space, to recognise the increasing economic importance of China. Our adherence to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank recently support for expansion of G7 to the G20 and other institutions to include China and India. Reflect that. But when it comes to UNCLOS, I don't buy that part of the narrative, which you sometimes hear that the rules were established by the West before we were at the table, before we were in a position to shape or frame those. China is a party to UNCLOS and has agreed to be bound by all of its provisions. They are an active and constructive participant at the negotiations for UNCLOS. It's a package deal with give and take. In some respects, there are beneficiaries. In other respects, there might be parts of the provisions of UNCLOS they don't like, but it's not the case that it is part of the rules-based global order which they did not have a hand in shaping. And to me, this is an important point because if middle power countries like Australia and others want a rules-based world, then I think if you have an example of an instrument like UNCLOS, which is clearly part, or in my view, one of the best examples of part of that rules-based order because it is an instrument that has very broad, almost universal adherence and everybody helped negotiate, if you can't stand up for adherence to the provisions of UNCLOS, what exactly does it mean to support a rules-based global order? So I can leave that question to you and I'm happy to elaborate on it further. One of the other points that I wanted to make is that some of the more assertive behaviour can have a tendency to backfire. International tribunals tend to like claimants to come to them with clean hands or to have come to them with... Not having done anything to exacerbate a dispute. And there is also a tendency in the public rhetoric to colour all actions that have been taken or to view all actions that have been taken through the prism of that behaviour. For example, if one were to argue that China may have a legitimate claim to a broad continental shelf under the law of the sea convention, its assertive behaviour in parts of the South China Sea, which seemed to be contrary to the rules of that convention, leads to the effect that its claims to such a shelf would be viewed with cynicism. If it does indeed have such a claim, and I return to my point about methodically and systematically going through the process, there is a process for securing recognition of that under the convention. And I think the previous speaker referred to the... Or one of the previous speakers referred to the possibility that uncloss itself by imposing a deadline for submitting continental shelf jurisdictional claims. The deadline is essentially 10 years after entry into force of the convention. May have created some pressure or some stress around this. Certainly Vietnam and Malaysia lodged a claim in 2009. The implications of that claim are that none of the features in the Spratly chain are high tide elevations. This is an area in which obviously China maintains a claim. So from a Chinese perspective, that would be a proposition that they would be seeking to counter, obviously. A low tide elevation, even a built up low tide elevation doesn't entitle one to a territorial sea. It only entitles one to a 500 metre safety zone. It means that it doesn't have any respect, limit freedoms of navigation or the navigation of military or other ships through that zone. So in terms of cooperation, I think there are many layers to this. The parties to the disputes need to resolve them peacefully and in accordance with law. Regional claimant states have a legitimate interest in the peaceful settlement of the boundaries or in the absence of that joint petroleum development activities and no unilateral development. All regional states have a legitimate interest in the effective management of fish stocks, which is something that we haven't touched on very much here. But essentially, estimates are that 10% of global fish catch comes from the South China Sea. Within the exclusive economic zones and in the area of the South China Sea, the ecosystems are interconnected and they're fragile. So cooperation would be a useful means of managing fish stocks and potentially a useful means of developing habits of cooperation or collaboration and confidence building. In terms of the Asian code of conduct, whenever I turn to the code of conduct, one of the questions that I can't really answer for myself is if it took nine years to negotiate the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which has 144 countries, why has it taken nearly 13 years to negotiate a code of conduct and probably to be meaningful? A code of conduct would need to be legally binding and there'd have to be a determination about what is the status quo pro-anti that you are looking at in terms of code of conduct. It couldn't be the status quo or de facto status quo as it is on the ground now because that would really, I think, be a fairly cynical approach to take to that particular issue. So there are just some of the points that I wanted to touch on in terms of potential means to collaborate. In terms of de-escalation measures, I think it is important that concrete measures be taken to improve communication, transparency, as have been done in other parts of the world which have been subject of high tensions. For example, northeast Asia is a dangerous part of the world. Those that lived in that part of the world during the Soviet era, presumably at the practical or naval practitioners and defence practitioners level had to develop means of confidence building or avoiding escalation or potential escalation of conflict. So I don't think it's beyond the means of any of the professional services involved to do that. I'm not a particularly expert in these fields so I'll leave it to others to comment in question time if people want to take questions on that. That was all I wanted to say. Thank you very much indeed, Marina. So there we have the four excellent, different but complementary presentations. We've got about 25 minutes now for discussion. So I will take Professor Dibb first of all. Yeah, I'm going to put it probably. Paul Dibb, Australian National University. They were excellent presentations. The answer I think, Marina, to your question is the Q's Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea is based on the 1972 US-Soviet Agreement which said in close proximity naval operations, you shall not train your weapons systems, you shall not illuminate the bridges of warships with dangerous lasers and you shall not interfere with a warship landing or taking off aircraft. The Q's use almost the same language. So does the 1993 Japan-Russian Agreement. Remember Japan and Russia have territorial differences and the ROK have a similar agreement with Russia and I don't know how that is working in 1995. So what's wrong with the idea of a bilateral cues between China and Japan? Based on the model of the leadership of the China and the US. Secondly, with regard to the East China Sea, Richard and I were in Taiwan 18 months ago and the president told us that they had negotiated an agreement between Taiwan and Japan on the Senkaku-Diwit islands and Taiwan has exactly the same claims to put to one side the sovereignty of their territorial claims and they've negotiated a workable fisheries exploitation agreement with go and no-go areas. What's wrong with that being applied to the South China Sea? Finally, on the South China Sea, Carl, Nishihara-san and I have recently been at a meeting of the 27 countries of the ASEAN Regional Forum, not the ministerial level and we were told very delicately by some of the ASEAN representatives, they believe they are close now to some meaningful progress on the code of conduct. The problem is, as Marina has said, after 14 years in typical ASEAN style, it's been nothing but talk. And I do accept, Carl, that failing a code of conduct, there does urgently need to be some resolution, certainly of behavior at sea and the dangers of miscalculation. I accept that ASEAN will not accept, sorry, China will not accept a multilateral cues with ASEAN for reasons you and I understand, but maybe ASEAN should be pushing for a series of bilateral months. Well, I did float the idea of potential regional fisheries cooperation and I defer to colleagues who may have information about whether that's been explored already but that is potentially an area of collaboration that could be explored and also on the de-escalation or code of conduct measures. There are examples right throughout I suppose Cold War era and beyond of those, usually it's two states though. So developing something like that, which involves multiple states is probably a little bit more difficult but others might want to comment on that. I'd like to do, Paul, I second it. In 2000, I have copies. So ASEAN and China both came up with a code of conduct and they exchanged them. They had three areas of disagreement, the geographic scope, Vietnam wanted the paracels and China said no. Conducting military activities in the region. China wanted to exclude the US military activities with the shoes on the other foot today, they're both doing it. And the third was what to do with features that you occupied, could you build on them or improve them. So it's only in 2013 that China actually changed policy and agreed to a joint working group. Now they've now moved up to two lists of commonalities, the structure of the code of conduct, early harvest measures, two hotlines and are now to address the difficult and complicated issues. And so there is, and you have the Singapore foreign minister who is the ASEAN country coordinator says, we just can't keep talking about it. So there's really, there's an edge to what ASEAN's saying and contrary, there is a unified ASEAN position on the South China Sea. And I quoted it from the AMM before under Malaysia they incorporated everybody's views in the longest statement on the South China Sea. So even Cambodia could agree. And then it took note of some minister's concerns. Now it's the ministers expressed these concerns and they also took note of the other minister's concerns. But I was just in Hanoi, but I've been in Yangon two separate conferences and Singapore earlier. And I've met the foreign minister one of the ASEAN countries. No one believes it could be accomplished this year because of the order of ASEAN meetings to accommodate Laos. 2017 is the earliest. I've heard ASEAN officials privately talk about crunch time. So that's why I think we need to give them that particular support. And long ago Indonesia drew up a zero draft code of conduct that was rejected by the other ASEAN foreign ministers out of hand because it wasn't done on a consultative basis and China would not accept a pre-cooked code. They had in it all the exact wording that you're saying. Indonesia drew from the existing corporates of international law and practice and brought it into the treaty. And what was left on the Indonesia dates to have a session, dates to come into force and et cetera. So there is good thinking in ASEAN around and the Indonesian ideas may have been rejected four or five years ago, but they're still up there. Thanks, Carl. Ewan. Thanks. A couple of comments. Paul's comment about queues just prompted me to think that queues has already been promulgated through the WPNS which all the ASEAN countries in China are a member. So that's already there. China's already signed up. The issue on the ASEAN side, I think has been about expanding queues to civilian shipping, because currently its terms apply exclusively to military or military encounters. That's something that the Singapore foreign ministers also recently attached himself to, perhaps as an opportunity, a point of least resistance, given some of the delay in tactics that China has put down in the way of a negotiation on the code of conduct. An expansion of queues would bring presumably some benefits, but I think also we need to be mindful of the fact that avoidance of conflict through miscalculation is just one part of what's happening in the South China Sea. Deliberate policy through other means also needs to be addressed. Queues in some ways might perversely help China by reducing the risk around some of that salami slicing and thickening of the presence. It's not a panacea by any stretch although I commend efforts to try and avoid accidental collisions wherever possible. The other comment I was going to make was about Taiwan. And again, Paul already mentioned it, but I think there's a broader point to be made. I don't think any of the panelists mentioned Taiwan, but obviously it's there. It's not recognized as a state, but it's a key part of both disputes, both in East China Sea and South China Sea. We have to recognize that as a fact of life, and it's going to become more important I think because the judgment gets closer in the Hague. The only feature that might naturally be awarded a status of an island in the Spatly Islands is a Taiwanese-occupied feature, ituaba. I'm really shaking your head. It may, we don't know. I mean, whether it's certainly debatable, but it's got the best claim, I think, of any of those features. And if those judges decide that they need to give some thing to China out of that judgment, that might be one way it goes. But obviously Taiwan will then come into the picture very directly in the South China Sea. On the Fisheries Agreement, yes, it was good for taking the strategic heat out of the East China Sea. As a Fisheries Sustainability Agreement, it wasn't much good because there's no quota limit on that. So it's maybe not a way forward as a model for food security in the South China Sea. To do justice, Marina, she did actually mention Taiwan. I certainly want to pass on that she meant. I mean, it is important obviously because the claims of the People's Republic of China derived from the claims of the Republic of China, which in the view of some in Taiwan, still exists on Taiwan. And President Ma during his recent visit to Abo, a typing island, went to great lengths to stress the fact that it was an island fully capable of supporting life, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's certainly not irrelevant. Anybody else before we go to the next? Maybe I can just again return to Professor Deep's Taiwan-Japan Fisheries Agreement. I think the principle there is of course to shelf sovereignty issue and then to come to some agreement. So in that context, you could see China, Japan, 2008 Fish and Agreement. And then also from 1972 and 2012, it was exactly on that principle of not really stick to the sovereignty issues and just shelving the issue and then to develop aspect of relationship in the broader sense. But of course, 2012 changed that dynamic and this basically China had to respond to reestablish a new kind of a status quo. So they will see in 2014, that's what's going on. On the Q's, I think the irony here is, I mean Q's unplanned encounter, so if something happens or accidental, but China-U.S. contacts, a lot of the U.S. freedom of navigation, also a lot of the regular surveillance intelligence gatherings, all of these flights over into the airspace close to China's 12 nautical sort of airspace, it's not, it's unplanned, it's a plan. So in that context, I think the two MOUs would be more relevant in that context but also to really implement MMCA because it's on the paper, but neither side do not seem to have a same interpretation, understanding of the concept or what they have agreed to surprisingly. So. Thank you. I'll take two questions, Anthony and then the lady, A&U colleague from the Observer Research Foundation. Anthony Bergen from ASPY, just following from what you and said and Paul Dipp's comments. I think, I didn't take any comfort from Admiral Swift saying that the Q's system for the U.S.N. and the Chinese Navy was working well because most of the incidents that we've seen over the last few years have not involved naval vessels. There have been fishing vessels or Coast Guard vessels and I think you had made a very good point that I think with these incidents at sea type agreements they will have to incorporate civilian vessels. I suppose my question to Carl is, is there any scope to, no one's mentioned submarines and the proliferation of submarines, is there any scope at all to think about some sort of incident at sea agreement with respect to submarines? And of course, the other thing that I observe looking at those sort of agreements is that they are purely voluntary, of course. There's no enforcement mechanism at all. So I suppose to broaden the question out with these sort of, as Paul said, these sort of incidents at sea type agreement, are there a scope to bring in civilian vessels and aircraft and submarines and to change the actual legal status of these arrangements? And your neighbour. Hi, my question is more regarding the difference in interpretation of UNCLOS. So China asserts that foreign military vessels should acquire Beijing's permission before operating in their easy account which is disputed by US and its allies and most European nations. But US says that whether it's military or commercial ships, they have a right within another country's easy. Now the version that China holds is also the version that most South Asian nations was including India, where India also believes that another country must acquire India's permission for operating within India's easy. So how do you approach or resolve an issue where there's a difference in interpretation about regarding an article that stated in the UNCLOS which is now largely binding into the larger question of South China's disputes? So two questions for panellists. Well, I'd like to go back to earlier questions that freedom of navigation, I'm sorry, is not being threatened for commercial, for the vast amount of commercial shipping. It narrows down to the operations of military ships and aircraft, rightly so the fishermen. And in November, Chinese warships stopped the resupply of Vietnamese island by pointing guns and putting a platoon on deck and pointing and turning it back. And those that fall outside the queue, so that's why the ASEAN pushed to extend it because the Coast Guard has been at the forefront of China's efforts. And that's why I actually included armed Coast Guard vessels in my little spectrum is that considered an armed activity. So we have to see that. And therefore then it's why it's important because the Philippines is a victim. It's its fishermen, its military aircraft and its boats. They are not able to exercise freedom of navigation really and that's part of their claim to the arbitral tribunal. Vietnam less so because it's less congested. So that's, and it's necessary then and not just a bilateral but to get those agreements in place. Philippines needs to traverse up inside its coast and China can block that passage and isolate Philippines features. I think that's important. On the fishing, I've suggested, and Anthony, you and I had an old discussion on this that APEC and a subcommittee or a committee within APEC that deals with these matters could serve as the venue because Taiwan is represented and we could take fisheries as just a large resource issue that needs to be managed. And I think there's scope for really pushing that attitude. As for submarines, I think one, the first thing that's hitting regional states is what to do for rescue, if a submarine gets in trouble and runs aground. And I think that's the venue for both the intersectional meeting on maritime security when the ARF and the ASEAN defense ministers plus and because there's a synergy now that officials from both can attend each other's meetings and that's the new dimension. It won't come up in the enlarged ASEAN maritime forum which I intended Vietnam's invitation because it's so hesitant. They do seafarer training and they don't want to get into top issues. Yes, and you're right. There is this dispute. It's not just India. Most of the little states as you move from India around have put restrictions on, or tried to impose restrictions on the passage, claiming really it's not an exclusive economic zone and it's an exclusive zone for them to control. That has to be worked out between the powers concerned. And I would say that some of American activities in the Chinese, he said that what they complain about is close in, has led Mark Valenci to raise the difference between active and passive engagement with signals and electronic intelligence gathering. That's why I'm saying we gotta put it to the military. But as for the MMCA, having been in Pacific Command in 2001, the MMCA was going since 1998, that didn't stop the EP3 from being brought down. In fact, that thing had accomplished very, very little and now there are many more veterans. So I leave open the EZ question and that's one sense practically has got to be resolved. China and the US, as they do make some progress, have got to discuss, after all, the Soviet Union in the United States could do it in a position of greater hostility. What is it that the US is doing that they might consider not doing but continue to exercise their right to sail through? Some of this is smoke and mirrors, the Triton exercise by the C. Curtis Wilbur. China just made statements and the Wilbur made its passage. So we have to distinguish Chinese acting on a stage and not taking actions and what it might do if the US increases the scope. So you can have that. Vietnam removed the requirement to seek permission to requiring prior notification but then says in practice, it doesn't do, someone sails through, they don't interfere. Other responses from the panel? I would just add on that you'll be nice that the United States ratifies Un-Clause and then within the Un-Clause framework, there can be further discussion whether the liberal states demand for prior notification how that work with the passive or innocent passage. We all keep on saying that. You're as Congress you mean. Well, I say one thing, the law of the convention doesn't prevent the regional states to come to an agreement to create a special legal regime. That's why I proposed. Perhaps there is a need to think about creating a special legal regime that applies to the South China Sea and that deals with this very issue that you just described. So certainly that is legally possible. Just in terms of the enforcement issue, certainly the code of conduct, even if it's adopted as a legally binding document, it won't be enforceable. So it doesn't really matter whether that is actually legally enforceable or not. Even the current declaration on the conduct is actually reaffirmation of the existing principles and rules of international law which are already binding. So it doesn't really change much in terms of the legal nature of those rules. What makes difference is that if they can be a clearer understanding as to, if you take this kind of course of action, then this is the sort of reaction you would get, then that clarity in terms of the reaction you would anticipate would give them a confidence in terms of how far they can actually go within the political limitations and the strategic limitations that may assist in preventing inadvertent escalation of conflict into a warfare. Okay, I'll take two questions, Gordon and then the gentleman behind it. One of the real challenges in this issue is the broader question of how to calibrate the U.S. involvement in the U.S. rule. And there's an argument to be made that in a lot of these issues, the situation has to get worse before it can get better. And the Senkaku is kind of a prime example, right? I mean, it wasn't until 2005 in the Bush administration where there was a very clear articulation that that dispute kind of fell under Article 5 of the U.S. Japan Treaty that all of a sudden the stakes were raised to the point where both Japan and China had to take it seriously and move forward in that regard because it was clear. On the other disputes, there's actually an awful lot of ambiguity, particularly from the claimant states. And so there's this, again, it's a calibration. You want the U.S. involved, but not to a destabilizing level. So it's a lot of back and forth. And the reason I raise it here is that I'm after 25 years in Washington, D.C., increasingly one who views the U.S. as a highly distracted global power that has to be lobbied to and convinced to engage in these issues. Now, I realize our Chinese friends view everything that happens this region as part of this American grand strategy to contain China and that we're instigating all these crises. But my view is that, really, there's gotta be a strategy on the part of all the claimant countries and even Australia, if you're interested in the region, as to how do you work the U.S. in this process? How do you get them engaged? Because the absence strategy doesn't happen. And I would argue that Australia's actually been probably one of the most effective countries in this region in particular at getting the U.S. to do things, right? I mean, you can't look at a major regional initiative in the last 20 years where Australia wasn't there first and actively involved in lobbying the U.S. to join, whether it's APEC or East Asia Summit or TPP or the ASEAN Regional Forum, whatever you're talking about. So there is arguably a unique role for Australia to not just do overflights in freedom of navigation things, but to coordinate, clarifiably, with the other claimant states on that issue in particular. So how do you calibrate how involved you want the U.S. to be? Because if you're doing this on the presumption that this is a strategy driven out in Washington, I think you're going to be mistaken. So if your Chinese don't blame the Americans, blame Australia, that's right. Generally behind you. Thanks a lot. Captain Mike MacArthur, I'm the Director of the Seapouse in Australia. I just have two comments and then a question. For you, Marina, the comparison of the security, managing the security tensions was excellent. One thing you didn't mention, however, was airspace. I had a discussion with Admiral Swift a couple of months ago, Pacific 15, and my comment to him was that whilst we can possibly manage the ships coming together at night time, where we scrape hulls and move apart and apologize, I mean, you can't do that with aircraft. And when you look at the number of air forces, including carrier grip wings that are operating in East Asia, Admiral Swift said something very telling to me. He said that if anything was going to happen, it was certainly going to be a flashpoint in East Asia and in the airspace. That's just one comment I had. The other comment just with you, Anthony, with regards to submarines. Certainly, Carla, I agree that that's certainly a great option with regard to submarine, search and rescue and escape. But managing positions of submarines when you're talking about water space management, prevention and mutual interference, countries don't generally are too keen in advising where their submarines are at any one time. So that's going to be a continuing challenge for us because water space management with the increase in numbers of submarines in East Asia and South East Asia is going to be an ongoing issue and management problem for us. So my question though for the panel is, I don't think it comes as any surprise to us here that the Australian government might be looking at options with regards to exercising its rights of freedom of navigation operations either within the South China Sea or East Asia or the South China Sea specifically, either unilaterally or bilaterally, most likely with the United States. What would be the panelist's recommendations to the Australian government on that policy initiative? Thank you. The freedom of navigation does not achieve anything to address the real security problems which is what China is building on those artificial islands and what it's likely to do. It's not claiming the space that we're going to respect is 12 nautical miles or so through it under innocent passage. It's just not on. And then picking on the para-cells was an unnecessary distraction by the United States from the main game which is really in the para-cells. It doesn't, you might do it because you're under alliance pressure. It does not get China to budge one inch. Marina. Sorry, maybe. Yeah, Marina. Sorry, I just wanted to respond briefly to that. To a certain extent, I think the United States undertaking the freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea has delivered a global common good. I don't think the right freedom of navigation which exists under UNCLOS and Customs and International Law has to be exercised by every single party to UNCLOS consistently in order to reinforce it. It's more a question of not acquiescing against any challenge to a right that already exists. So you've got to sort of calibrate what needs to be done there. So all I'm saying is you don't consistently need to do it to prove the point that you have it. You do need to make sort of declarations and occasionally do a freedom of navigation exercise. It's not unhelpful either. I just also wanted to clarify. The reason I was shaking my head about Itu Arba in Taiwan is really that arbitral judicial tribunals tend to have a mind of their own. And once you kind of press the go button, you never really know what you're gonna get out of them. But they will, I think they will try to be as conservative as possible and rule on as few things as possible that they absolutely need to. So if they don't need to rule on that, I don't think they will rule on that. And sorry, the final point I wanted to make in answer to a previous question, was somebody asked for a legally binding example of a joint consultation mechanism. And when I did a bit of research on this, the only one that I came up with in recent times was the one between Argentina and the UK after they fought a war over the Falklands-Malvinas, which they put into effect in 1990 about movements of their naval vessels in the general vicinity, which seems to have been legally binding, but you probably don't wanna get to that threshold before you have something legally binding. Any else from the panel? Jing Dome, I think you have a question. Right, I think maybe you just make a comment on the general issue. So because of these freedom navigation, all these dispute, everybody wants to make a point or seek to a particular position. What worries me is that if everybody is doing similar things, one of these days there could be a problem there. So I think still the first priority should be to focus on crisis management. So some of the mechanism we mentioned needs to be reiterated and emphasized very importantly. And secondly, I think if we demilitarize in rhetorical terms and return to a more of sort of joint economic development, exploration, scientific, environmental protection, I'm thinking about what Canada has been trying to do for many, many years and eventually gave up, the late 80s through see the grand joint workshop of South China Sea for many, many years is exactly to bypass the sovereignty issues but to focus on more, this will be important, the economic development issues. So there you can get more countries, claimant states to cooperate rather than to highlight and amplify differences in dispute. Thank you, just a couple of points. One is it's now time for our terrific panelists to receive their gifts and for all the rest of you disappointed punters who aren't getting gifts, don't forget, 50 freebies outside. And the final point I'd like to make is simply that from my experience this is about being the most non-soprific post-lunch panel session that I've ever been to and for that we're very much indebted to all our excellent speakers. So thank you very much.