The revival of the Maritime Silk Road through a sustainable blue economy presents both a strategic opportunity and a governance challenge for China and ASEAN. With fisheries collapsing, climate pressures intensifying, and marine industries expanding into trillion-dollar scales, both sides increasingly recognise that fragmented national efforts are no longer viable. China’s push for blue finance, offshore renewables and sustainable fisheries aligns with ASEAN’s new blue economy frameworks but lingering distrust in the South China Sea prevents deeper integration. A formal China–ASEAN Blue Economy Council would provide the institutional anchor needed to transform shared waters into zones of joint development, climate resilience, and stable long-term cooperation.
As early as the 15th century, the waters between the Ming Dynasty and the Malay Archipelago saw large-scale trade, forming what scholars would refer to as the “maritime silk road”. The region was regarded as the Nanyang (南洋) in the Chinese imperial records (translated as the “Southern Seas”), and these commercial activities completely transformed Southeast Asian polities, such as Majapahit and the Malacca Sultanate, into bustling economic trade hubs and laid the foundations for a maritime global economy. It was the resulting commercial gravity from the region that then plugged the rest of Southeast Asia, from Hội An in Vietnam to Guangzhou in Southern China, into this orbit of trade.

While not perfect, the general success of the maritime silk road was driven by a basic logic of mutual cooperation. Regional maritime cooperation allowed the import of highly sought-after goods such as silk and spices, bridging together great Asian empires. This had people comfortably fed, quickly scaled economies and kept local governments closely linked, a triumph for the early-modern Asian world.

Several hundred years later, things have changed, and mounting food insecurity and climate stress have made that model untenable. The blue economy now demands innovation and sustainability: resources like fish, cobalt, and nickel can no longer be taken at any cost, but must be harvested in ways that protect and preserve marine ecosystems. In 2018, China’s proposed concept of the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” set the stage for something radical, and the latest developments of the regional blue economy will only go on to completely reimagine the maritime silk road for the years to come.

While the revival of the Maritime Silk Road presents a powerful avenue for China-ASEAN joint development and climate resilience, its success will depend on how effectively cooperation is institutionalised. In this, a China–ASEAN Blue Economy Council will contribute significantly to cooperation in the region, overcoming lingering distrust and fears of Chinese dominance in regional waters.

Understanding the Broader Significance of the Regional Blue Economy

The World Bank frames the blue economy as the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihood, and jobs while preserving the health of ocean ecosystems.” The blue economy will be worth an estimated $3 trillion by 2030 and is expected to benefit from significant advancements. The scale and strategic importance in both China and ASEAN are undeniable. In 2024 alone, China’s Gross Ocean Product (GOP) surpassed 10.54 trillion yuan (~$1.4 trillion USD), which contributed 7.8% to its national GDP.  ASEAN’s blue economy rivals that scale, with estimates of its value ranging between $1.3 and $2.5 trillion USD, with some nations deriving nearly a third of their GDP from ocean-based industries of GDP. 

The immense growth behind the blue economy is borne out of necessity, such as the increased demands of new industries. China is increasingly turning to the depths of the ocean to mine the sea’s rich veins of cobalt, nickel and other rare earth minerals to power its EV cars and renewable energy systems. For ASEAN, the focus is largely on its fisheries, crucial for local populations as important sources of animal protein. That being said, some ASEAN countries are also tapping into the ocean’s energy potential: the region continues to extract oil and gas from offshore fields, and some member states have initiated wind and wave alternative energy sites. But beneath this growth lies the most pressing challenge of all, the simultaneous need for these endeavours to be sustainable.

The maritime region shared by China and ASEAN has been fraught with ecological issues that jeopardize food supply. Rampant overfishing has pushed 64% of regional fish stock to the brink, with a medium to high risk of collapse. China depends on a steady supply of fish for its local population, yet fish stocks in China have dramatically plummeted as much as 90% since the 1950s.  And as if that were not already enough, the haunting spectre of climate change looms larger by the day. China’s coastal waters recorded an average temperature of 21.5 °C, a record high, and the accelerated climate crisis has seen sea level rise in Southeast Asian member states by 1-3mm per year. Experts caution of disappearing coastlines, the flooding of ports, and the mass graves of what were once healthy and abundant marine ecosystems. The regional blue economy’s test is not in its expansion but in its ability to navigate a particular balance: growing without consuming the future it aims to secure.

A Comprehensive Response: Sino-Southeast Asia Blue Economy Approaches

China’s strategic engagement with the blue economy, as laid out in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), reflects a deliberate and calculated pivot in its national development paradigm. It positioned the marine economy as a core strategic priority and linked it to Beijing’s broader aspirations of being a “maritime power.” Toward this, China is strategically developing blue finance instruments to push and catalyze investment in marine conservation. In late 2020, the Bank of China issued Asia’s first blue bond, which raised nearly $1 billion to invest in high-priority areas like offshore renewable energy development and the restoration of critical coastal ecosystems. Investments in blue carbon ecosystems, most often seagrasses and mangroves acting as natural carbon sinks, were additionally made in China’s bid to achieve complete carbon neutrality by 2060. Alongside these new changes, China also set out to try to advance sustainable fisheries management. Central to this effort was a concerted push to dramatically reduce overfishing and implement stricter regulations to preserve fish stocks.

In 2023, ASEAN adopted the ASEAN Blue Economy Framework and laid the groundwork for cooperative and sustainable development. In May 2025, the Blue Carbon and Finance Profiling (ABCF) was unveiled and presented as a collaborative project between ASEAN, Japan and the UN Development Programme. Its mission was to assess and financially evaluate the carbon stored in the vast marine and freshwater ecosystems across ASEAN. This, too, is positioned to unlock blue capital as more investments from both public and private sectors pour into projects that viably leverage blue carbon sequestration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide for sustainable energy sources.

The framework will also prove to be instrumental for ASEAN in addressing the question of sustainable fisheries management, with these investments in blue carbon ecosystems, where climate and adaptation infrastructure that addresses sea-level rise and coastal flooding can be scaled. ASEAN has also aggressively pushed to coordinate a unified effort to crack down on foreign fishing intrusions, having developed the “ASEAN Roadmap for Combating IUU Fishing (2021-2025)” with the precise aim of protecting and managing the health of its fisheries. These initiatives represent promising starts, yet they also reveal the limits of ASEAN’s current mechanisms—underscoring the need for stronger collective governance if regional cooperation is to meaningfully address South China Sea disputes.

Joint Cooperation: The Need for a China-ASEAN Blue Economy Council

On August 25, 2025, a seminar titled “Jointly Building a New Engine for China–ASEAN Blue Economy” was held in Malaysia, co-hosted by the China Institute for Reform and Development (CIRD) and the Maritime Institute of Malaysia. The discussions converged on one key conclusion: that joint development, rather than zero-sum competition, offers the most viable path to sustainable growth and regional stability. Participants emphasized pragmatic cooperation in areas such as marine resource management, green shipping, and technological exchange—a signal that both sides increasingly view the blue economy in the South China Sea as a collaborative regional project reliant on trust and confidence, not merely an economic venture.

To truly unlock the potential of the blue economy, collaboration between both China and ASEAN in the South China Sea is indispensable. And to achieve this in the face of regional tensions, cooperation must be formalised through a partnership that promotes closer multilateral engagement and shared resource management. The creation of a “China-ASEAN Blue Economy Council” could become the central or authoritative representative body for overseeing cross-border maritime cooperation and help to ensure that strategic, resource-rich areas, like the South China Sea, act as integrated economic zones. However, the effectiveness of such a Council would depend heavily on how clearly its responsibilities and decision-making processes are defined. Without specific mandates on enforcement or dispute mediation, it risks becoming a purely symbolic platform rather than a functional mechanism. Its success would therefore rely on establishing transparent governance frameworks and equitable voting rights that reflect ASEAN’s principle of consensus, rather than dominance by any single power.

A blue economy council would help to make the South China Sea a region where China and ASEAN work in tandem, rather than one characterised by disputes and conflicts. The recent September 2025 confrontation between the Chinese and Philippine Coast Guards at the contested Scarborough Shoal illustrates how mutual distrust and overlapping claims continue to turn strategic waters into flashpoints, reinforcing the need for institutionalised cooperation mechanisms such as a China–ASEAN Blue Economy Council.

Increased interest in the blue economy from regional partners has proved, with confidence, the viability of such a dream of joint coordination. On September 9th, 2025, delegates representing both China and ASEAN convened in Nanning for the China-ASEAN Countries Forum on Blue Economy Cooperation and Development, where further engagements were held to streamline efforts to harness coastal assets toward comprehensive economic growth. It was here that Beijing took its leap forward, from bulk trade and infrastructure corridors to marine biotech and new-energy marine systems. Several joint research and technology-exchange initiatives were launched between China and ASEAN coastal states, signalling a shift from infrastructure-led engagement to high-value maritime industries. In spite of Beijing’s maritime ambitions, which proved to be aggressive at times, the promise of access is an assurance which could appease the anxieties that ASEAN has of maritime encroachment.

Yet, for many Southeast Asian nations, the idea of institutionalising a body so closely linked to Beijing raises understandable apprehension. ASEAN’s long-standing emphasis on autonomy and regional centrality means that any mechanism perceived as subordinating its interests to Chinese leadership would face resistance. This calls for the need for a genuinely multilateral framework which ensures respect for ASEAN’s existing mechanisms.

The Chinese delegation expressed a level of enthusiasm for technology sharing and financing measures, which could see extended trade reach for ASEAN member states. The first seven months of 2025 saw ASEAN and China enjoy trade approximating $600 million, projected to increase exponentially. In the recent 47th ASEAN Summit held in Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur, the Chinese Premier Li Qiang went on to express Beijing’s continued commitment to finalise the China-ASEAN Free Trade 3.0 and to ensure its success across areas covering both the digital and green sectors. This rising momentum of China–ASEAN deliberations is itself an early illustration of the kind of multilateral framework envisioned earlier — one that, if further institutionalised, could lay clearer foundations for blue economy cooperation, enabling more deals to be struck and more agreements signed.

It is high time that ASEAN considers anchoring itself in China’s regional strategy if it wants to bargain for diplomatic-trade-offs so that it too can propel the bloc further into blue economy exploration. According to one senior ASEAN official, the bloc’s aspirations to expand the blue economy will “not be hindered” by the growing tensions in the South China Sea with China. But as times remain uncertain, the prospects of a joint Blue Economy Council could provide an opportunity for deepened ties where innovations in marine tech and sustainable practices are coordinated and not scattered. Only through such targeted and directed collaboration can the reimagined maritime silk road become the beating heart of the region’s engine of growth. The path forward lies not in ASEAN following China’s maritime vision but in co-creating and anchoring collaboration in the sustainable stewardship of common waters.

Image credits: Wikimedia Commons