Commentary: Not to allow a firebrand to burn down ASEAN Community

As southeast Asian leaders gather in Kuala Lumpur on Monday for a summit critical to their bloc's goal of forging a regional community, the Philippines has been making a racket of strident background noise that threatens to drown out the rallying cry.

The repeated hyping by Philippine officials of the South China Sea issue is nothing but a plot to hoodwink the entire Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) into acting as a cat's-paw in Manila's futile fight for its unfounded claims.

That trick is doomed. The 10-member union, which has built its striking edifice today on a tradition of strategic statesmen prevailing over parochial politicians, has never allowed itself to be reduced to the dupe of some self-centered troublemakers, and the chance for it to discard that indispensable custom is virtually nil.

In an admirable manifestation of its commitment to the time-honored ethos and to the grand vision of regional integration, the ASEAN chair this year, Malaysia, has vowed to focus the summit on the real priority, community-building, which has entered the home stretch.

The other clear-eyed and far-sighted in the ASEAN team need to help their host prevent their pivotal meeting from being hijacked by one headstrong member and derailed from the right track to the detriment of the whole region's interests.

It is not that the bloc should now throw anyone overboard. Unity and compromise form the bedrock of integration. It is just that ASEAN leaders need to steer clear of bad concessions and preclude the squeaky wheel from misleading them into misspending the oil.

For starters, ASEAN is not a party in any of the complicated South China Sea disputes. Thus it is perfectly logical and highly advisable that it refrain from entangling itself in individual rows, which should be unraveled by those directly involved.

That does not mean that ASEAN has nothing to do with the South China Sea issue. On the contrary, like China it has a high stake in keeping the vital body of water calm and placid. For that it has a ready partner in Beijing, which has pledged to work with ASEAN to safeguard South China Sea peace and security and formulate a code of conduct.

Meanwhile, Manila's recent finger-pointing over China's island reclamation in South China Sea is just thief shouting thief. It is the Philippines' illegal occupation of some of China's Nansha Islands that lies at the root of the bilateral dispute. Its calculation that the crying baby gets the milk cannot fool any sober mind.

On the other hand, building better infrastructure on Nansha Islands will enable China to better fulfill its international obligations in the South China Sea, one of the world's busiest sea lanes, in such areas as maritime rescue, marine research and meteorological observation, not to mention that such construction falls totally within China's sovereignty.

Indeed, ASEAN and China -- economically intertwined, culturally affinitive and both committed to common development and regional prosperity -- have more important business to do. They have agreed to seize "the diamond decade" to further boost win-win cooperation.

Among the priorities are upgrading their free trade area and promoting negotiations on the broader Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The two sides need to make sustained joint efforts to achieve their goal of lifting bilateral trade to one trillion U.S. dollars by 2020.

On top of that, with ASEAN sitting on a hub of the ancient Maritime Silk Road, the China-proposed 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiative is infusing bilateral cooperation as well as ASEAN integration with new opportunities and fresh vigor. And the fact that all its 10 members have become the founding members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank marks a good start.

Thus now is a time for ASEAN to set the eyes on the big picture of community-building and advance integration and development for the benefit of both the bloc itself and the broader region. It is no time to allow someone to put a stick in the wheels. Endi