Concluding a South China Sea Code of Conduct simply to meet a deadline would be a serious mistake. A weak, vague agreement could be worse than no agreement at all.

Efforts to finalise the code between Asean and China this year are hampered to a large extent by differences between Manila and Beijing.

Concluding a South China Sea Code of Conduct simply to meet a deadline would be a serious mistake. A weak, vague agreement could be worse than no agreement at all.