Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research at the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings Institution, said China and the U.S. need to be very clear about certain core interests, such as access to the South China Sea and the peaceful settlement of disputes. 

On the other hand, Prof. Da Wei from the Center for International Strategy and Security at Tsinghua University argued that the two countries don't have a conflict over the general principle of those issues but the devil is in the detail, for instance, where in the South China Sea the U.S. can have access and where it cannot.