Bailan Island or Sand Cay was occupied by Vietnam in 1975 and has undergone sporadic occupation and development ever since. CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative / DigitalGlobe

SINGAPORE - The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has decided not to issue any joint statement on the stunning ruling this week that rejected China's sweeping claims in the South China Sea, an ASEAN official source said Thursday.

The 10 member states were informed by Laos, the current chair of the grouping, on Wednesday night that ASEAN would not be issuing a joint statement due to a lack of consensus.

"We gave up on issuing the ASEAN statement. The chair informed us this is because no consensus could be reached," said the source.

The source disclosed that ASEAN members had been discussing the possibility of issuing a joint statement after the Permanent Court of Arbitration announced its decision Tuesday on the arbitration case brought by fellow member the Philippines.

The source declined to reveal details of which countries opposed the joint statement, but Cambodia, historically one of Beijing's closest allies in Southeast Asia, has publicly expressed opposition to such a move.

ASEAN has often been split on issuing joint statements commenting on the South China Sea dispute for fear of antagonizing China, which has become an important trade and investment partner for many of them, especially for poorer Indo-Chinese countries which also depend on China for financial aid for infrastructure development.

A boy holds Philippine and Chinese flags during a protest in Manila on Tuesday. Filipinos celebrated the verdict issued by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague regarding the Philippines' claim for maritime entitlement in the disputed West Philippine Sea. Nikon Celis, ABS-CBN News

In a stinging rebuke, the international tribunal in The Hague found that China's assertion of historical rights in the South China Sea were invalid and that its island-building activities violated the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Int'l court backs PH on dispute vs China

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.