Abstract
The Military Maritime Consultative Agreement was signed by the representatives of the People's Republic of China and the United States in December of 1997. The conceptual origins of the MMCA can be found in similar agreements established between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and more recently in the rapid military rise of China since the Cold War's end. This article assesses the desirability of a concomitant formal arms control agreement by examining the principal stumbling blocks. It proposes that any arms control agreement would need to provide confidence-building measures, bring stability to the bilateral military relationship, and minimize the likelihood of conflict escalation. These include problems with managing air and submarine forces, the Chinese reliance on asymmetric warfare, and the regulated announcement of naval exercises. It warns that wrongly handled, an arms control agreement may aggravate the Sino-American rivalry without producing any of the intended stabilizing benefits.