China's think tanks should speak out more frequently and not fear debates for the country's foreign policy to be better understood, observers said after  a deep and open dialogue on the South China Sea issue  between Chinese and US think tanks in Washington.

Officials and experts from China and the US gathered at a conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIT) to discuss the ruling's legality, possible reactions and its implications to China-US relations, a week ahead of the July 12 ruling over the South China Sea case.

Apart from reiterating China's consistent stand of non-acceptance of the arbitration court's ruling and non-participation in the case, Dai Bingguo, former Chinese state councilor in charge of foreign affairs, called for sobriety, warning of possible unexpected accidents and even chaos in the region and in Asia.

CEIT vice president Douglas Paal echoed Dai's views, telling reporters that parties involved in the dispute can "find ways to manage the arbitration award."

"Though China and the US have set up nearly 100 dialogue mechanisms to maintain contact and consultation, but  rarely focused on the South China Sea, so many US scholars remain unclear about the basic facts of the South China Sea." said Wang Wen, executive director of Beijing-based Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies and a co-initiator  of the dialogue.

Attendees consider the dialogue a significant sign of China's willingness to proactively strive for discourse power and clear up misunderstandings over the country's foreign policy, said Wang.

Though some top US think tanks declined to participate in the conference over the "sensitivity" of the topic at the very beginning, during the whole preparatory process, issues like the timing and topic selection mostly follow China's views rather than the US', which shows  China's think tanks' increasing ability of agenda-setting and discourse power shaping. It also reflects the US' expectations on  China's current opinions on the South China Sea and respect for China's advocates.

The Washington dialogue was not the only international event on the South China Sea issue recently co-hosted by China's think tanks.

Wuhan University's Institute for Boundary and Ocean Studies jointly held a conference over the arbitration ruling with Leiden University's Grotius Center for International Legal Studies last week in The Hague, where the UN arbitration court is located.

Think tanks can better explain the intent, legitimacy and effects of China's foreign policy, and they should speak up for the key issues in disputes more often and fear no arguments, Wang Yiwei, head of the European Union Research Center at China's Renmin University, told the Global Times.