In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Cold War convention of containment, which undergirded American involvement in Vietnam, was broadly shared, internalized, at times even fostered, by the United States European allies. This consensus broke down by the 1960s, as successive US administrations saw themselves locked ever more rigidly into Cold War logic which seemed to require going to war to preserve a noncommunist South Vietnam. By contrast, the United States transatlantic allies and partners increasingly came to question the very rationale of US intervention. By the mid-1960s there was a remarkable consensus among government officials across Western Europe on the futility of the central objective of the American intervention in Vietnam of defending and stabilizing a noncommunist (South) Vietnam. European governments refused to send troops to Vietnam. However, West European governments differed considerably in the public attitude they displayed toward US involvement in Vietnam, ranging from France’s vocal opposition to strong if not limitless public support by the British and West German governments. Across Western Europe, the Vietnam War cut deeply into West European domestic politics, aggravated political and societal tensions and diminished the righteousness of the American cause.

China’s advances in the field together with the size of its scientific community and resources, position it at the forefront of biotechnological and gene editing research. Most recently, the still unconfirmed report of the first life birth of humans following IVF and gene editing techniques, has place China at the center of the global scientific, socio-ethical, and legal debates. This makes understanding the Chinese regulatory framework and the strength of its governance to address the vast scientific, social, ethical, and political global implications of germline genome modification paramount. This chapter explores how the legal system in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) regulates human gene editing with particular focus on germline applications. It further outlines existing governance frameworks and addresses the possibility of policy convergence by contrasting Chinese approaches to those adopted worldwide.