Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned against efforts to bypass ASEAN with new regional cooperation channels on Wednesday evening at the virtual East Asia Summit of foreign ministers from ASEAN, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea and the US reported the South China Morning Post.
Wang also took aim at what he said was “groundless” criticism and “platitudes” from the US and Japan over China’s human rights record, issues he said Association of Southeast Asian Nations members had stayed out of.
Wang said multilateralism was the “correct path” to resolving complicated problems in the world, but the region should “be wary of all kinds of pseudo-multilateralism and, in particular, resist the use of multilateralism to foment bloc confrontation”.
“ASEAN’s centrality in regional cooperation should not be hollowed out, and the existing mature regional cooperation mechanisms should not be set up in another way,” he said.