By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and Kathrin Hille in Beijing
Published: April 21 2009 19:12
China’s top admiral offered his US counterpart a warm welcome on Sunday when Admiral Gary Roughead arrived in China for events to mark the 60th anniversary of the Chinese navy.
Admiral Wu Shengli offered to fly Adm Roughead on his military aircraft from Beijing to Qingdao, where naval ships will participate on Thursday in an international fleet review. While the gesture may herald better relations, defence experts say US-China military ties are not yet back on track having been derailed last October by the Bush administration’s decision to sell $6.5bn (€5.0bn, £4.4bn) of weapons to Taiwan.
“We have made several offers of senior military officials to go to China and for senior Chinese to come here, and those have not yet been accepted,” said Dennis Wilder, an Asia expert at the Brookings Institution who served as an adviser to George W. Bush.
“The only one they have actually accepted so far is Roughead and that is in their interests because . . . having the Americans there is a plus for the prestige of the Chinese navy.”
During the Bush administration US-China military relations improved steadily, with only glitches, until they were severed when Washington unveiled the Taiwan arms package. An emerging thaw in March, which prompted David Sedney, the chief Pentagon Asia official, to proclaim his “best ever” defence meetings in Beijing, evaporated just days later after Chinese ships dangerously harassed the Impeccable, a US navy surveillance ship tracking Chinese submarines in the South China Sea.
One senior US defence official welcomed the Chinese invitation to Adm Roughead, who is the most senior US officer to visit China since Adm Timothy Keating, head of Pacific Command, visited Beijing in January last year. While cautioning that the symbolic visit was a “one-trick pony” that would not address the broader relationship, the official said both sides were “reasonably close” to resuming formal relations.
“We need to get to Beijing, we need to get to the ministry of defence, we need to engage in a set of candid, comprehensive discussions . . . and if we get to see the right guys, I think there will be some reasonable exchange, some productive back and forth,” said the official.
While the Impeccable incident steered the relationship off course, there have been other positive developments, including the Chinese decision to send naval ships to help protect waters off the Horn of Africa from piracy.
“It is ironic that our strategic-level relationship is still on hold while US navy ships and PLA [China’s People’s Liberation Army] navy ships are working together in international counter-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa,” said David Finklestein, director of China studies at CNA in Virginia. “The Chinese side had made its point. It’s now time to move forward in the military dimensions of the bilateral relationship.”
US defence officials have long complained that the military sphere lags behind the broader, more positive, relationship between the countries. Visiting Washington last month, Li Zhaoxing, the former Chinese foreign minister, said both countries would benefit from improved defence relations.
However, Chinese defence experts say while Beijing wants to improve military ties with the US – as Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, said in his joint statement with Barack Obama last month – it is cautious about moving full steam ahead.
“There is no doubt about the determination to develop the defence relationship with the US but . . . I would not speak of a full resumption of military-to-military ties right now,” said Zhang Minqian, a security expert at the University of International Relations. “This process involves dialogue on issues such as US weapons sales to Taiwan.”
Arms sales to Taiwan could surface again in a menacing way, particularly if Mr Obama decided to sell F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan, a decision that Mr Bush left to his successor. But Mr Wilder says the Obama team is not engaging in “serious deliberations” on F-16s at present.
Speaking in Beijing on Sunday, Adm Roughead told reporters that his first set of talks with Adm Wu had focussed on the anti-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa, and included discussions about exchanging liaison officers in the Gulf of Aden.
The four-star US admiral said the piracy patrols represented the first time the two navies cooperated so far from China with a “real-world mission”. He added that the day-to-day operations were “important confidence-building measures” that had “greatly enhanced mutual understanding”.
Adm Roughead did not indicate whether he expected any progress on the touchy issue of preventing dangerous standoffs at sea. Despite the Impeccable incident, however, he stressed that he did not regard the PLA Navy as aggressive in general. He said the US Navy’s relationship with the Chinese navy did not lead to the sort of dangerous standoffs that occured with the Soviet navy decades ago.
Adm Roughead may have been toning down his views to avoid offending his Chinese hosts, however, as several senior US military officials have voiced concerns that China is not playing by the same kinds of rules of the sea that even the Soviets adhered to during some of the most difficult encounters during the Cold War.
Defence experts worry about the potential for more incidents in the South China Sea . US spy ships have increased their surveillance missions in the maritime area as China develops a new – Jin class – submarine – designed to carry nuclear-armed missiles that will be based at the Sanya naval base on the southern island of Hainan.
The senior US official said the US Navy had “quickly” resumed surveillance operations in the South China Sea, saying the disruption caused by the Impeccable incident was “momentary”.
“China knows we’re there, it is the same ship, same type of ship doing the same thing, maritime research,” he added.
Amid expectations that China might use the 60th anniversary to unveil its plans to build an aircraft carrier, Adm Roughead said the Pentagon would not be surprised, while stressing that the real issue was not whether China built an aircraft carrier, but what it intended to do with a blue-water navy.
The senior US defence official said the Impeccable incident underscored the need for China to be clearer about its military intentions, in order to reduce incidences of dangerous military misunderstandings at sea.
“We would be more confident if they were more forthcoming,” said the official. ”We want to sit down and talk to them about their tactics and their strategy, and their developmental programmes, and the rationale behind their blue water navy.”
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