When foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations gathered for a meeting with their Chinese counterpart last month in Kunming, they were surprised to find their homework had already been done for them.

Without any prior consultation Chinese diplomats handed them a 10-point “consensus” addressing contentious issues such as territorial disputes in the South China Sea and asked them to sign it. According to two diplomats present at the Kunming gathering the Chinese gambit provoked an angry reaction, particularly from the Philippine, Vietnamese and Malaysian delegations.

The incident demonstrated Beijing’s struggle to win friends and influence potential regional allies in the run-up to Tuesday’s landmark decision by an international arbitration tribunal in The Hague, which dismissed China’s expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea.