There is a clear logic behind Beijing's demand for bilateral talks with the Philippines over the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. Amid the noise and heat increasingly generated by South China Sea tensions, it is sometimes forgotten that the shoal is claimed only by China and the Philippines, and is not part of the Spratlys dispute further south - a long-standing tangle that draws in other claimants.
Therefore, a call for bilateral talks is entirely rational. Similarly, the Vietnamese are seeking bilateral talks with Beijing over the Paracel Islands further west - even while Hanoi seeks a multiparty Asean-led solution to the Spratlys dispute and other South China Sea problems.
There, however, any simplicity ends. Instead, we have an intriguing range of possible outcomes in the still-unlikely event that Manila agrees to Beijing's demands to talk one to one, rather than through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
For example, would negotiations even acknowledge that Scarborough sits within the Philippines' 200-nautical-mile (370 kilometres) exclusive economic zone under the UN Law of the Sea? If so, how would this be squared with China's controversial nine-dotted line? Enclosing virtually the entire South China Sea, the line bisects the Filipinos' exclusive economic zone and includes Scarborough.
And if the two sides are struggling to convince the other of their historic and occupational claims under formal negotiations, would Beijing take the unprecedented step of agreeing to Manila's demands to take the case to the International Court of Justice?
Singapore-based international law scholar Robert Beckman recently noted that an estimated five rocks of the shoal sit above the high-tide mark so they can be legally considered islands - which would provide for 12 nautical miles of territorial waters around them. But they are not big enough to claim their own exclusive economic zone.