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