The past few years are characterized by increased Chinese assertiveness in theSouth China Sea that resulted in various confrontations with the Philippines andVietnam and an enhanced involvement of the United States. The core question iswhat other states, especially China s adversaries, can do, to evade spirals ofescalation without compromising their claims.This report compares the crisis-prone Sino-Philippines with the rather harmoniousSino-Malaysian relations. It extends analysis backwards to the early days ofChinese assertiveness in the late 1980s. This allows the author to show thatChinese behavior in the territorial conflicts co-varies with the contender´s level ofrecognition of the benign Chinese concepts of national self and world order.Displaying respect towards China mitigates Chinese conflict behavior withoutcompromising the opponent´s territorial claims.Dr Peter Kreuzer, Member of the Executive Board of the PRIF, is a senior researcherin PRIF´s programme department Governance and Societal Peace . In hisresearch he focuses on Philippine domestic policy and maritime and territorialconflicts in the South China Sea.
