SOUTHEAST ASIA — The Indonesian government has walked back a suggestion by Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa to impose a "toll booth" charge on vessels transiting the Strait of Malacca, after he briefly floated the idea last month. The waterway, flanked by Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, carries more than a quarter of global trade and links the Indian Ocean with the Pacific via the South China Sea.

The strait serves as the primary energy lifeline for U.S. allies such as South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, and carries most of the oil that flows from the Persian Gulf to key Asian markets. Goods from China also transit through it.

"We do not have tolls. All of us are trade-dependent economies," Singaporean Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said. He also said the city-state's position on maritime governance applied equally to both major powers. "With respect to both America and China, we have told both of them, we operate on the basis of UNCLOS," Balakrishnan said.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan said there should be a watertight understanding that there could be no changes in the Strait of Malacca without the involvement of all neighboring countries. The strait is governed by a series of agreements between Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand covering coordinated maritime patrols, aerial surveillance, shared intelligence and environmental protection. By contrast, the Strait of Hormuz lacks any formal arrangement among its surrounding countries for its management.

The Strait of Malacca is roughly five times longer and ten times narrower than the Strait of Hormuz at its tightest point. Any disruption would force vessels on costly dayslong detours, with ships rerouting south through the Lombok Strait, around the Java Sea near Jakarta, or bypassing the Indonesian archipelago entirely.

The U.S. has maintained a naval presence across the region for decades, with the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet playing an active role during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Chinese leaders have long expressed irritation at that presence, and China's navy, now the largest in the world, has undergone rapid modernization. Former Chinese leader Hu Jintao dubbed China's dependence on crude oil imports through the waterway the "Malacca dilemma," and China has spent decades seeking a solution to reduce that dependence.

Barbora Valockova, a research fellow at the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the National University of Singapore, said the city-state plays a central role in managing the waterway. "Singapore is kind of a coordinator in this," she said. "Maybe the lesson from Hormuz is that it shows that we should even redouble our efforts to keep Malacca open, predictable and insulated as far as possible from wider geopolitical confrontation," Valockova added.