Watch This | Kishore Mahbubani: U.S. is using South China Sea disputes to embarrass China

Kishore Mahbubani, former Permanent Representative of Singapore to the United Nations and currently a Distinguished Fellow of the Asian Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, gave a speech in Hong Kong last week on the accelerated contest between China and the U.S.

In a Q&A session after his speech, Mahbubani was asked about the South China Sea issue, which he described as "very complicated." He said the South China Sea issue is a factor in the geopolitical competition between China and the U.S. He also pointed out that the U.S. is using the South China Sea issue to stir up disputes and embarrass China.

He said that the dispute in the South China Sea is not between China and ASEAN as a whole, but between China and four ASEAN countries, including Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia. But he doesn't think these countries will start a war over the dispute. It is the United States that is using the South China Sea issue as a geopolitical bargaining chip to find ways to embarrass China.

Mahbubani revealed in his book "Has China Won?" a conversation he had with a former U.S. ambassador to China, Stapleton Roy, who told Mahbubani that Chinese leaders had proposed to Obama that the South China Sea be demilitarized, but the U.S.  rejected the proposal, which gave birth to the militarization of the South China Sea. The US has not reported this premise, but only that China is militarizing the South China Sea, which "makes the issue of the South China Sea very complicated," he added.

The U.S. always claims that they are concerned about the freedom of navigation, but China is now the world's number one trading nation and is more concerned about freedom of navigation than the United States, Mahbubani said.