Two months ago, General Zhang Li, former deputy chief of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and member of the Standing Committee, stated that the Chinese government should consider building an airport and a naval dock on Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands.

According to Zhang, these facilities would reflect the strategic importance of the Islands that were essential to "maintaining China's internal stability and long-lasting peace".

To drive home this message, Zhang argued that having these installations would also permit China to carry out air patrols of the area, support Chinese fishing vessels and underline the country's claims to sovereignty of these disputed islands that are simultaneously claimed by Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan.

In May this year, China imposed a fishing ban in the South China Sea, ostensibly on the pretext to prevent over-fishing. Still, its act of dispatching patrol ships to monitor an area of over 120,000 square kilometres only served to arouse concerns and suspicion on the part of the Southeast Asian nations at a time when the Beijing leadership is setting its sight on improving ties with the region.

The long standing friction between these nations over the Spratly could easily boil over if no serious attention is given to it.

Last February, the Philippine Congress approved the controversial Archipelagic Baselines Act that designated Philippine territorial claims in the South China Sea as a "regime of islands" - not part of the main archipelago but still under Philippine sovereignty, which will continue to fuel disputes with other claimants to these islands.

Then on March 5, in a move clearly related to the Philippine legislation, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, just weeks before he stepped down as prime minister, visited Swallow Reef and reiterated Malaysia's sovereignty claims in the South China Sea.

Resource-rich area

This was followed by a comment by Admiral Abdul Aziz Jaafar, the navy chief, that the Royal Malaysian Navy would not hesitate to chase out, if necessary Chinese ships found in the Malaysian waters.

In addition, Abdul Aziz stated that the RMN would continue to adopt the Fleet-in-Being as an approach to ensure stability in the Malacca Straits, the South China Sea, the east coast of Sabah etc.

In response to Abdullah's visit, China reiterated that it had "indisputable sovereignty" over the atolls "occupied" by Malaysia.

The Spratly Islands and their surroundings are an extremely resource-rich area, particularly with cast amounts of oil and gas reserves.

That massive exploration is stalled for now is due to the huge costs involved, but there is no denying that all the littoral states have been intensifying the control of their respective possessions, especially in the wake of the energy crisis the world over.

Last August, then defence minister Najib Abdul Razak, while visiting Layang Layang Island located near the Spratly, made it clear that Malaysia "have to safeguard the sovereignty of this island if we want oil or other products from the earth", and the visit was "necessary to help create awareness in the people on the sovereignty of the nation".

In China, Layang-Layang is known as Danwan Jiao, while the Philippine government calls it Celerio. Najib's statement was not only dismissed by Beijing and Manila, it also attracted the unusually strong criticism by the Taiwanese authorities, which claimed that Layang Layang belonged to the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Complicating the situation is a strong sense of nationalism and victim-hood among these states. As far as China and Vietnam are concerned, sovereignty is a highly sensitive issue due to historical humiliation at the hands of the various colonial powers.

Simmering resentment

It is interesting to note that both the Chinese and Vietnamese leaderships have dumped communism as the paramount guiding ideology, and fully embrace market economy and nationalism as the two pillars.

On May 29 , 2009, Singapore's Straits Times reported that Russia's "state-owned arms exporter Rosoboronexport had agreed in principle to supply Vietnam with six ultra-quiet Kilo-class submarines worth US$1.8 billion", which "will give Hanoi a quantum leap in anti-submarine and anti-ship warfare capabilities, and will act as a deterrent to China's increasingly powerful naval forces".

Meanwhile, Malaysia has recently lost Batu Puteh/Pedro Branca to its rival Singapore, which has resulted in subtle yet simmering resentment among the populace, particularly the Malays.

Should sovereignty come under threat again, it will very likely destabilise the Barisan Nasional government further given the current state of flux in Malaysian politics.

As for the Philippines, failure to reclaim Sabah from Malaysia has long been a thorn in side, and any more losses of territory will only enrage the public further.

Hence, it is clear that so long as the competing claims to the Spratly are not resolved (not to mention other sovereignty disputes involving Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore), Asean's development into a more integrated political community will remain far-fetched, whereas China's charm offensive towards Southeast Asia, too, will have its limits for the fact that mutual confidence is still lacking due to the Spratly issue and the race for energy.