Chinese, US defense officials meet in Beijing

By AP News Dec 07, 2011 11:11AM UTC

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese and U.S. defense officials met in Beijing on Wednesday for their highest-level contacts since recent frictions over arms sales to Taiwan and plans to strengthen the American military presence in the Pacific.

The 12th round of U.S.-China Defense Consultative Talks are a barometer of relations between China’s 2.3 million-member People’s Liberation Army and the U.S. military that is repositioning itself in the Pacific following the winding down of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the Chinese military has lashed out at the recent U.S. moves, Beijing’s decision to proceed with the talks appears to display it is placing a new importance on regular talks between the sides, even as their rivalry sharpens.

Gen. Ma Xiaotian, the People’s Liberation Army’s deputy chief of staff, and U.S. Defense Undersecretary Michele Flournoy are co-chairing the discussions.

China summoned the U.S. ambassador and warned of damage to relations following the announcement in September of the decision to offer Taiwan the $5.85 billion package to upgrade the island’s F-16 fleet.

Beijing considers the self-ruled island Chinese territory to be recovered by military force if necessary.

In the weeks that followed, it postponed a visit by the U.S. Army Band and Adm. Robert Willard, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, along with joint anti-piracy exercises and a military medical exchange, scholars Bonnie Glaser and Brittany Billingsley said in an analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

China’s decision to proceed with the talks, however, appears to show that Beijing has “accepted that suspending overall bilateral military ties does not serve U.S. and Chinese interests,” Glaser and Billingsley said, warning also that it wasn’t clear yet whether the Chinese side is willing to restore the full range of military-to-military contacts.

As it does at every such meeting, China is expected to raise complaints over military sales to Taiwan, limits on exchanges, and U.S. military surveillance missions within China’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

Ma is also likely to raise U.S. plans announced in late November to rotate Marines to Australia for training with Australian forces from an Australian army base in Darwin, beginning in 2012, Chinese officers quoted in state media said.

Up to 2,500 Marines, infantry units as well as aviation squadrons and combat logistic battalions, will go there from Okinawa or other Marine stations in Japan and elsewhere in the Pacific for a few months at a time.

Chinese hard-liners have called the move, along with strengthened military ties with allies Japan and the Philippines as well as former enemy Vietnam, a new U.S. containment policy that must be resisted through more active diplomacy.

“The U.S. has always asked China to be transparent about its strategy. It is the U.S. who should make its intentions clear,” Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan, of the PLA’s Academy of Military Sciences was quoted as saying in the China Daily newspaper.

Flournoy is expected to raise U.S. about territorial disputes in the South China Sea, North Korea, Iran, maritime security, cyber security, nuclear weapons policy, and outer space, Glaser and Billingsley said. She will also seek to reschedule postponed exchanges.

Results of the discussions will provide an indication of the overall health of military-to-military ties, including whether or not they set an agenda for exchanges next year and how extensive the list is, they said.

An important barometer of the bilateral military relationship will be whether the Defense Consultative Talks produce an agreed-upon agenda of bilateral military exchanges for 2012 and how extensive that list is, Glaser and Billingsley said.

http://asiancorrespondent.com/71478/chinese-us-defense-officials-meet-in-beijing/