The past few years have been an eventful period for the South China Sea dispute. The tensions and disputes and the consequential diplomatic pressures exerted on China have prompted an unprecedented debate among the foreign policy community in the country. Chinese policy-makers and analysts seriously reviewed other countries’ policies and deliberated on China’s appropriate responses and future policy options. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the Chinese debate on three issues: (1) the ways various schools of thought have viewed the South China Sea dispute, (2) the types of policy proposals made, and (3) areas where consensus and disagreements exist. It also attempts to analyze how the debate relates to China’s official position and actual policy and behaviour in the dispute. From this comprehensive overview, we can derive some useful clues to better understand China’s response to the South China Sea dispute in the coming years. Four notable themes have emerged from the Chinese debate. First, contrary to the widespread external criticism of China for its growing assertiveness, the predominant view among Chinese analysts is that all the tensions and disputes are mainly attributable to the collusion between the United States and regional claimant states. Second, it has been frequently proposed that China should be more proactive in the South China Sea in order to change its current reactive posture. It has been suggested that China can achieve this goal by taking initiatives in three areas: accelerating exploitation of resources in the South China Sea; restraining the involvement of the United States in the South China Sea issue; and exercising greater flexibility in adopting multilateralism to deal with various non-traditional security challenges in the South China Sea. Third, the majority of Chinese analysts and officials believe that the disputes in the South China Sea in the past few years have led to the worsening of China’s regional security environment. Fourth, there appears to be an emerging consensus that Beijing should practise a South China Sea policy that could be best characterized as non-confrontational assertiveness, Pradumna B. Rana

This paper argues that in the aftermath of the global economic crisis, the relatively
centralized international monetary architecture set up at the Bretton Woods
conference is evolving towards a more decentralized multi-layered global financial
safety net (GFSN) comprising (i) the G20 at the apex as an overarching institution (ii)
multilateral financial safety nets (MFSNs) established under the auspices of the IMF
(iii) bilateral financial safety nets (BFSNs) among central banks, (iv) regional
financial safety nets (RFSNs) established in various regions of the world, and (v)
national financial safety nets (NFSNs) or reserve accumulation by individual
countries. The most significant factor explaining this evolution is the increased
incidence of capital account crisis subsequent to the deepening of financial
globalization. The paper argues that the evolving GFSN has increased the flexibility
of the international monetary architecture and enhanced the voice (weight and
influence) of emerging markets on global economic governance to some extent.
However, more needs to be done. Also there is the need for institutional and other
reforms to prevent and manage a systemic crisis in the future and to protect innocent
bystanders. What is the role of Asia and what can Asia do?
http://www.rsis.edu.sg/publications/WorkingPapers/WP238.pdf