Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s assurance to then US president Barack Obama at a meeting in the White House in 2015, that China would not militarise the disputed Spratly Islands, has often been upheld by Washington as a clear example of Beijing’s perfidy over the South China Sea disputes. For the sake of peace and stability in the South China Sea, RSIS Research Fellow Dr Collin Koh wonders if this issue can finally be put to rest with the incoming Biden Administration. Clearing the conceptual hurdle of “militarisation” needs to be the first essential step, he wrote.

…Dr Collin Koh is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University based in Singapore.