Editor's Note:

Following US Secretary of State Ashton Carter's speech on Saturday at the 14th Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), which adopted a softer tone than former Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel last year at the event, Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of General Staff Department of the PLA, made his remarks at the SLD. Sun reiterated China's commitment to safeguarding peace and stability in the South China Sea and called on relevant countries to jointly work in the same direction. On the sideline of the SLD, Global Times reporter Sun Xiaobo invited two foreign scholars to share their understanding of Sun's speech.

Euan Graham, director of International Security Program at the Lowy Institute, Australia

I saw a symmetry between Sun's speech and Carter's. Both the US and China are framing their language in a win-win logic in the Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific. Most of the media were expecting a big fight in the SLD between the two, but the big story is that there is no big fight here. At the same time, Sun has been careful to underline that China will maintain its firm position on questions about sovereignty and rights, particularly in the maritime zone.

This was also a broad and comprehensive speech about China's role as a provider of global public goods, and there was a conscious attempt to talk about China's achievements such as in anti-piracy on the global stage. He's also careful to underline that China has made progress on demarcating land borders with many of its neighbors.

Both the US and China are circling around each other, each trying not to look more provocative than the other and carefully avoiding a public confrontation.

They are also appealing to the key audience in the maritime area - Southeast Asian countries including the host Singapore. There are messages being sent to different audiences at the same time.

Sun's speech is consistent with the "dual-track" approach proposed by China. He acknowledged there are disputes. That's significant because it shows there is a basis for negotiation with other parties and leaves the door open for negotiations of the code of conduct (COC). But meanwhile, there was not much specific commitment in terms of timing and details about the COC, so it's open to interpretation.

I'm not sure the Southeast Asian audience will be convinced by Sun's assertion that the purpose of the land reclamation activities in the South China Sea is not military but for search and rescue and weather observation through non-military means. That's the official Chinese position, but a great deal of skepticism and doubts remain about what the real purpose of the projects is. That's the dominant issue that has flown through all the sessions and dialogues in the SLD. It's difficult for China to give reassurance and make its incontestable claims at the same time.

Kashin Vasily, a senior research fellow with the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, Russia

Chinese projects on Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands in China) were completely justified and irreversible. China is not going to make any concessions on this issue: construction of all the necessary facilities on the reclaimed islands will proceed as planned. The reclamation project, obviously, has great strategic significance for China.

The reclaimed islands will still be too small to deploy any significant military forces on them. But they will be very valuable for China, providing the Chinese ships and aircraft with shelter and supplies. It should be remembered that China is not the only country which conducts reclamation activities in the area - Vietnam is doing the same, although on a smaller scale. So, the project is important for China, and the Chinese feel that they are being unjustly blamed and they are not going to reverse their stance.