The past few years have been an eventful period for the South China Sea dispute. The tensions and disputes and the conswquential diplomatic pressures exerted on China have prompted an unprecedented debate among the foreign policy community in the country. Chinese policy-makers and analysts seriously reviewed other countries' policies and deliberated on China's appropriate responses and future policy options. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the Chinese debate on three issues: (1) the ways various schools of though have viewed the South China Sea dispute, (2) the types of policy proposals made, and (3) areas where consensus and disagreements exist. It also attempts to analyse how the debate relates to China's official position and actual policy and behaviour in the dispute. From this comprehensive overview, we can derive some useful clues to better understand China's response to the South China Sea dispute in the coming years.