When Wen Jiabao visited Japan as Chinese premier in 2007, he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to make the East China Sea an area of “peace, co-operation and friendship”. Following suit, his successor Li Keqiang used an almost identical phrase about the South China Sea last October when he met the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Brunei.

Despite the rhetoric about harmonious seas, countries from Vietnam and the Philippines to Japan and the US are increasingly critical of what they see as aggressive Chinese behaviour in the region.

In a recent speech at the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore, Chuck Hagel, US defence secretary, said what many southeast Asian countries believe but are wary of articulating too forcefully out of fears about Chinese retaliation: “China has called the South China Sea ‘a sea of peace, friendship, and co-operation’ and that’s what it should be. But in recent months, China has undertaken destabilising, unilateral actions asserting its claims in the South China Sea.”