Because of its size, proximity and potential power, China can easily arouse unease among many of its Southeast Asian neighbours.

Such apprehension is often compounded by latent resentment in the region at the dominant role of local ethnic Chinese in commerce and memories of Beijing's support for revolutionary communism in these countries during the Cold War.

China needs to act as a model good neighbour to allay suspicions and build confidence. Yet to many Southeast Asians it seems to be doing the opposite in the South China Sea. The recent incidents involving China and the Philippines in the vicinity of the Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands are the latest manifestation of this.

Even though some other claimants to the Spratlys have been consolidating their presence, the spectacle of a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a potential super-power planting territorial markers and building occupation structures on reefs in new areas also claimed by the Philippines, which is a far smaller and weaker country that China, is a troubling one.

Beijing has said it does not want to deal with the South China Sea dispute in the eighteen nation ASEAN Regional Forum set up to handle just this kind of issue. It prefers instead to deal one by one with its much smaller neighbours. Such behavior makes it difficult to accept at face value China's ritual assurances that its intentions in the region are benign.

There is much concern in Southeast Asia about the extent of Beijing's claims to the South China Sea itself, as distinct from the Spratlys and other disputed groups of islands and reefs.

Do the Chinese maps showing a broken line encompassing much of the South China Sea define the country's territorial waters, as many believe? The tongue-shaped claim, based on some vague historical consideration, is baffling to Southeast Asians.

Beijing's claim is also ominous because it overlaps territorial claims, exclusive economic zones and continental shelves of Southeast Asian states. If accepted as valid, it would turn much of the South China Sea, through which vital trade routes pass, into China's territorial waters and bring the maritime boundaries of China into the heart of Southeast Asia.