Bandar Seri Begawan: Amid China’s aggressive behavior in the Indo-Pacific region, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said during his visit to Brunei that India supports the policy of development, not expansionism. PM Modi arrived on a two-day visit to the Southeast Asian nation, beginning this week. Brunei is among the several nations with whom China has territorial disputes. While these nations assert sovereignty over the regional waters, China claims the entirety of the South China Sea as its own.
In remarks at the banquet hosted by Brunei’s King Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, the Indian PM hit out at China without taking its name. He said, “We support the policy of development, not expansionism". The PM further invoked the international law regime — again a swipe at China as China rejects international norms in the region.
“Through international laws like UNCLOS, we support freedom of navigation and overflight. We agree that there should be a consensus on the code of conduct in the region,” said Modi, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Hampering the international navigation rights in the seas and the sovereignty of nations in the regions, China has claimed the entirety of the South China Sea as its own. In July 2016, the Arbitral Tribunal of the UNCLOS ruled that China had no historic claim to the waters in the region as it had been claiming and it had breached the Philippines’ sovereign rights with its actions in the South China Sea. Modi’s comments regarding UNCLOS and the navigation of the seas were also, therefore, aimed at Chinese hegemonic designs in the general Indo-Pacific region and specifically the contested waters of the South China Sea.
