Will U.S., China Navies Play Nice?

Will U.S., China Navies Play Nice?

A slew of worthwhile questions came up during the Q&A at last month’s Harvard-Diplomat panel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We even got to banter with an old hippie who held forth on China’s virtues as an honest broker in the non-Western world, a stark contrast to supposedly predatory America. That reminded everyone we were at an epicenter of the Sixties.
Or, one graduate student asked about what China is doing to prepare itself for nonmilitary missions in the “far seas,” as Chinese officials and pundits call waters remote from East Asian shores. She voiced particular interest in the part China’s newly refitted Soviet aircraft carrier might play in ventures far from Chinese shores, like counterpiracy, counterproliferation, or humanitarian and disaster relief. And, in time-honored graduate student fashion, she sneaked in a second question, this one about the prospects for U.S.-China cooperation on the high seas.