Sustained mitigation and/or suppression of type-I edge localized modes (ELMs) has been achieved in EAST high-confinement plasmas, utilizing the resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) fields produced by two rows of magnetic coils located just inside the vacuum vessel. Systematic toroidal modelling of the plasma response to these RMP fields with various coil configurations (with dominant toroidal mode number n = 1, 2, 3, 4) in EAST is, for the first time, carried out by using the MARS-F code (Liu et al 2000 Phys. Plasmas7 3681), with results reported here. In particular, the plasma response is computed with varying coil phasing (the toroidal phase difference of the coil currents) between the upper and lower rows of coils, from 0 to 360°. Four figures of merit, constructed based on the MARS-F computations, are used to determine the optimal coil phasing. The modelled results, taking into account the plasma response, agree well with the experimental observations in terms of the coil phasing for both the mitigated and the suppressed ELM cases in EAST experiments. This study provides a crucial confirmation of the role of the plasma edge peeling response in ELM control, complementing similar studies carried out for other tokamak devices.