"After the speech of Mr Abe, a foreign friend told me I should keep calm. And after the speech of Mr Hagel, this friend told me again that I have to continue to keep calm," Wang Guanzhong, deputy chief of the General Staff of People's Liberation Army, said on Sunday.

"But I have to express gratitude and regret to my foreign friend," the PLA officer said, or rather joked, at the Shangri-La Dialogue, when he decided to reject Japanese and US accusations about China, changing the tone of his originally dovish speech.

Wang's difficult choice was evident throughout the three-day Asia-Pacific defense event, as an emerging China tried to better interact with the world while it was also thrown into the vortex of a discussion at the meeting dominated by the West.

You Ji, a professor at the School of Social Sciences & International Studies at the University of New South Wales, said the event held by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a London-based think thank, has gradually lost its focus.

"The event was designed to strengthen communication and cooperation, so it should not become a battlefield to besiege one country because of some powers' rows with it," said You, who attended all 13 Shangri-La Dialogue meetings.

Days before Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived at the meeting, the first Japanese prime minister to do so, he foreshadowed the confrontational aura targeting China. Unsurprisingly, allusions materialized in his carefully choreographed speech and body language.

Xu Qiyu, a panelist from the Chinese military who attended the meeting for the third time, said he was under greater pressure than before.

Xu's pressure came not only from the current maritime tension or Abe and Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel's criticism of China. It was more about the West's uneasiness about a fast-developing country.

"I actually had foreseen the harsh words against China because I've known this is a platform for Western powers to exercise their rhetoric," said Xu, a researcher at the National Defense University of the PLA.

"The point is, in some Western powers' eyes, China is such a different country that they can hardly get used to or embrace its rise," he said.

Chinese panelists raised questions after every plenary session, but just like Xu, who questioned Abe's historical views after his keynote speech, many said they did not get a direct answer.

They were also often surrounded by their foreign counterparts and reporters during the brief coffee breaks and mealtimes, asking or sharing views about China.

Such communication, no matter how it was accomplished, encouraged Xu to continue participating in multilateral defense meetings, in a more confident and open way.

"It's good for us to know the other's concerns about China anyway," he said. "Some concerns are raised with ulterior motives while some are natural and reasonable, and they drive China to deal with the security issues better."

Contact the writer at zhaoshengnan@chinadaily.com.cn