ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews how the so-called South China Sea issue has evolved over the past ten years, how ASEAN’s understanding, perceptions, and roles over the issue have changed correspondingly. The South China Sea issue has grown both quantitatively and qualitatively, it has become much more complicated and layered over the past ten years. It has meant different things to different countries at different times. The change in perceptions in ASEAN in regard to the South China Sea issue has moved from that of a territorial dispute, which only involves a handful of claimants, to a security issue at the centre of ASEAN’s own existence. This has been the main driver of the change in ASEAN’s attitude and policies on the South China Sea over the past ten years. ASEAN’s attitude has shifted from denial towards a more proactive stance. The South China Sea issue has helped ASEAN by making it more adaptable to new geo-strategic reality and more capable of managing the regional security environment. This ten-year review starts with the sovereign dispute over the features in the South China Sea, the origins as well as the core of the larger problem that the South China Sea issue has grown to become today.
