Taipei, April 17 (CNA) Taiwan should be more actively seeking to engage in discussions on South China Sea affairs to avoid being left out of the equation as Asian countries around the region step up their efforts to engage in dialogue, scholars said Sunday.
"The best way to solve the territorial dispute over the South China Sea is to increase bilateral or multilateral dialogues to prevent tension caused by accidents, and Taiwan should be part of these discussions, " said Liu Shih-chung, a researcher at the Taiwan Brain Trust, a local think tank.
Taiwan, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Brunei each claim all or part of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer South China Sea.
The hot-button issue resurfaced last week after Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung met with Guo Boxiong, vice chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission, and they agreed to "work closely to develop basic measures" on issues related to the sea, according to Vietnamese media and China's Xinhua news agency.
Meanwhile, the government of the Philippines made an official complaint to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf about China's claim to the sea.
The Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed April 14 reports that the country had filed a formal protest with the U.N. April 5 over China's territorial claim over the entire South China Sea.
"It seems to me that the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou has been very low-key on the issue in order not to affect the warming ties across the Taiwan Strait, " Liu said.
The last time Taiwan voiced its sovereignty over the South China Sea was July 29 last year, days after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional forum in Vietnam that the U.S. "has a national interest in freedom of navigation and open access" to the region.
The South China Sea dispute is not only related to sovereignty, but also to energy resources and piracy, among issues, Liu said, adding that Taiwan should leverage the airstrip it maintains on Dongsha Island and hold discussions with other countries on programs such as humanitarian relief cooperation so that it can remain "in the equation."
Liu said the government has been trying to seek cooperation with China on the issue through meetings between scholars from both sides of the strait -- what he described as "second-track diplomacy" -- but added that no decisions have been made.
The U.S. will also play an active role in the matter, Liu said, because "that's what the ASEAN countries want."
"The ASEAN countries want to establish sound relations with China but they are also concerned about China's possible hegemony in the region, which is why they want U.S. involvement, " he said.
Speaking on the same occasion, Wang Kao-cheng, director of Tamkang University's Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said Taiwan's exclusion in the dispute reflects the reality of international politics, given that it does not have diplomatic relations with the other claimants of the South China Sea.
He said Taiwan should be more aggressive in seeking dialogues, as "Taiwan's military presence on Dongsha Island and its claim of sovereignty over the region are facts."
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was scheduled to hold a meeting the following day to respond to the think tank's findings, according to James C.K. Tien, director-general of the ministry's Department of Asian and Pacific Affairs. (By Chris Wang) ENDITEM/J