How China and America Can Move from Competition to Stability

The American team thought it was signaling restraint. The Chinese team saw preparations for combat. In a closed-door Sino-American crisis simulation I helped organize in the 2010s — which the U.S. military funded as part of a long-term project — the Americans repositioned an aircraft carrier away from a maritime dispute between China and the Philippines, expecting the move to reassure Beijing. Instead, the Chinese participants became deeply alarmed. They believed the carrier was now ideally positioned to launch combat operations while remaining less vulnerable to attack. The episod