These maneuvers further exposed Washington's long-harbored intent to sow dissent between China and ASEAN countries.

However, no matter how hard the US tries, the obsolete Cold War mentality is not expected to take root again in the region, due to the disappearance of the soil for its cultivation. After decades of booming cooperation and exchanges, mutual benefit and win-win have become the consensus of political and public opinion in China and the ASEAN countries. With the establishment of open dialogue and such cooperative mechanisms as the free trade area, the regional forum and the China-ASEAN Expo, bilateral cooperation between the two will inevitably increase in the future.

China and the ASEAN countries have pushed forward their cooperation in the Pan-Beibu Gulf, the Great Mekong River Basin and the Nanning-Singapore Economic Corridor, and in addition, their prospering economic and trade exchanges, educational and cultural exchanges have also deepened.

The wide-ranging and ever-expanding China-ASEAN cooperation has overshadowed the US' discord-sowing intent in the region, as indicated by ASEAN countries' lukewarm response to Washington's active interventions in their territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.

For China, whether or not it can defuse the strategic dilemma caused by its emergence will decide its ties with ASEAN countries. Due to their historical dependency on China, ASEAN countries remain particularly sensitive to present-day China's attitude in its dealings with them. China should extricate itself from any sense of superiority in developing ties with ASEAN countries in order to create a peaceful and stable environment for its development.

To this end, the country should unwaveringly adhere to the principle of mutual benefit and strive to forge the hard-won FTA into a firm bond and promote mutual cooperation and development. The two sides should also try to fend off outside interventions and ease mutual misgivings towards each other in the South China Sea dispute in an effort to turn the sea into an area of peace and cooperation.

The "harmonious world" concept advocated by China indicates the country is committed to safeguard, rather than revise, the current regional order. China's commitment not to devalue its currency during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, a move that helped crisis-stricken Southeast Asian nations recover, best proved that the country can undertake its responsibilities as a responsible power in any global and regional crisis.

The author is an associate professor at the School of International Studies of Nanjing University.