KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- China on Sunday told other countries not to "deliberately stir up trouble" in the disputed South China Sea, while insisting that it has no intention of militarizing the strategically vital area even though it has increased construction activities there.
Also Sunday, 10 Southeast Asian leaders signed off on a 10-year plan that addresses political, economic and social issues.
Deputy Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin reiterated China's position that its construction of artificial islands in the sea was designed to "provide public service" to the region by helping ships and fishermen and disaster relief efforts. This also includes military facilities to protect the islands and reefs, which are located far from mainland China, he said.
Since 2013, China has accelerated the creation of new outposts by piling sand atop reefs and atolls and then adding buildings, ports and airstrips big enough to handle bombers and fighter jets -- activities seen as an attempt to change the territorial status quo by changing the geography.
"One should never link the military facilities with efforts to militarize the South China Sea," Liu said. "This is a false argument. It is a consistent Chinese position to firmly oppose the militarization of the South China Sea."
Other countries "should not deliberately stir up trouble but contribute to the peace and stability of the region," he said.
Although Liu's statement broke no new ground -- China has said this in various ways before -- the setting for his remarks was significant: an Asian summit also attended by President Barack Obama, whose administration has backed the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries who have long-standing disputes with China in the South China Sea.
Liu's comments also reiterated China's insistence that it will not back down from its position on the resource-rich sea, irrespective of pressure from the United States. While it opposes any U.S. military incursion, China sees its own military presence there as justifiable.
Liu is at the summit accompanying Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.
At a separate news conference, Obama said the issue was a "key topic" at the summit of 18 countries that included China, as well as at a separate summit he had with leaders of 10 Southeast Asian countries.
"Many leaders spoke about the need to uphold international principles, including the freedom of navigation, and overflight and the peaceful resolution of disputes," Obama said.
"My fellow leaders from Japan, Australia and the Philippines have reaffirmed that our treaty alliances remained the foundation of regional security. The United States is boosting our support for the Philippines maritime capabilities and those of our regional partners," Obama said. The other claimants in Southeast Asia are Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.
The U.S. and others have called on Beijing to halt the construction, saying it is destabilizing an increasingly militarized region. Washington angered China last month by sending a warship inside a 12-nautical-mile territorial limit around Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands archipelago, where China and the Philippines have competing claims.
Liu called the USS Larsen's voyage a "political provocation."
"Is this a trend of militarization that calls for our alert?" Liu asked. "We hope regional countries and those outside the region will make positive and constructive contribution to our efforts to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea. Don't look for trouble."
Pact's 10-year vision
ASEAN leaders unveiled on Sunday another road map to a common community for the next decade even as the bloc missed targets for economic integration this year.
The 10 leaders signed a document declaring the establishment of an ASEAN Community starting Dec. 31, and another titled "ASEAN 2025: Forging Together Ahead" that laid out the vision for the next 10 years. It aims to create a community that is "politically cohesive, economically integrated, and socially responsible."
Less was said about the end-2015 targets for ASEAN Economic Community, also known by its acronym AEC, whose goal was to allow free movement of goods, services and skilled labor as part of a European Union-style integration plan, without a common currency. ASEAN will now attempt to complete measures unfinished in an eight-year plan by the end of 2016 after missing the end-2015 goal.
The AEC is one of the three pillars of the ASEAN Community, which was created by the signing of the declaration Sunday. The other two pillars are political-security and socio-cultural.
The AEC was envisaged in 2002 -- and a blueprint created in 2007 -- to face competition from China and India for market share and investments. While China's economic growth is expected to slow to an average of 6 percent annually over the next five years, India's expansion is likely to pick up to 7.3 percent in the same period, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.
An ASEAN scorecard this month showed that as of end-October, the grouping had implemented 79.5 percent of measures committed under the AEC. Among prioritized measures, the rate was 92.7 percent. The ASEAN 2025 report stated the "immediate priority is to complete the implementation of measures unfinished under the AEC Blueprint 2015 by end-2016."
"In practice, we have already virtually eliminated tariff barriers between us under the Asean Free Trade Area," Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said in a speech Sunday. "We now have to ensure that we create a truly single market and production base, with freer movement of goods and services."
Najib, the summit's host, hailed the ASEAN Community as a "landmark achievement," and urged members to accelerate integration. "The region is primed to expand exponentially," he said.
The AEC won't become fully functional until after becoming a legal entity on Dec. 31, and it faces some challenges. The region's diversity can sometimes be a hindrance. ASEAN has 630 million people, speaking different languages, following various faiths and governed by various systems.
Although the four poorer economies -- Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Vietnam -- have until 2018 to bring down tariffs, economic integration could further reinforce income inequalities in the region, he said.
AEC "is not the finished article. Neither is it officially claimed to be. There is much work to be done," said Mohamad Munir Abdul Majid, chairman of a council that advises ASEAN on business matters. "There is a disparity between what is officially recorded as having been achieved ... and what the private sector reports as their experience."
There are also other hurdles, such as corruption, uneven infrastructure and unequal costs of transportation and shipping. A wide economic gulf divides Southeast Asia's rich and middle income economies -- Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand and the Philippines -- and its four less developed members, Communist Vietnam and Laos, Burma and Cambodia.
After the ASEAN summit, the 10 leaders huddled with heads of state from four other Asian countries as well as President Barack Obama, Russian Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key for a two-hour East Asia Summit.
They were expected to discuss wider issues, including terrorism.
Information for this article was contributed by Eileen Ng, Aritz Parra, Annie Ho and Vijay Joshi of The Associated Press and by David Tweed, Choong En Han and Manirajan Ramasamy of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 11/23/2015