US DEFENCE secretary Robert Gates and his Chinese counterpart Liang Guanglie agreed stronger military ties between the two superpowers are necessary to avoid misunderstandings.
Mr Gates is in China on a bridge-building mission in Beijing, shortly before China’s president Hu Jintao heads to Washington for a January 19th summit with US president Barack Obama.
“We are in strong agreement that in order to reduce the chances of miscommunication, misunderstanding or miscalculation it is important that our military-to-military ties are solid, consistent and not subject to shifting political winds,” Mr Gates said after talks with Mr Liang.
Senior Obama administration officials, including Mr Gates, have urged Beijing to do more to rein-in the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, and maintaining good military relations is seen as vital.
However, military ties were effectively cut last year after the US sold €5 billion worth of weapons to self-ruled Taiwan, which Washington has vowed to protect but which Beijing considers a renegade province.
Mr Liang warned Washington against arming Taiwan in future, saying the weapons sales had “seriously damaged China’s core interests”.
China’s military modernisation programme is a contentious issue in the region and has alarmed some of its neighbours.
Beijing raised its official defence budget by 7.5 per cent in 2010 to 532.1 billion yuan (€62 billion). Many analysts, including those in the Obama administration, believe it to be far higher.
President Hu, who also heads up the central military commission, has prioritised naval modernisation and the navy is upgrading its fleet of destroyers and frigates.
One of the US’s most powerful assets in terms of regional security is its large aircraft carriers. Washington sends a powerful message when it deploys one of its Nimitz-class supercarriers, as it has done in east Asia during the Korean crisis.
China has long-watched this enviously and Chinese media said this year will mark the launch of the country’s first aircraft carrier, a year earlier than US military analysts had expected.
The navy will spend about €3 billion on two 60,000-ton aircraft carriers.
China is also building new “Jin”-class submarines, capable of launching nuclear warheads while at sea. It has built a naval base on Hainan, the island province in the south, that can serve submarines.
In the air, China is working on fourth-generation J-11 fighter jets, which Russia complains is a rip-off of its Su-27SK fighter aircraft.
Washington is also concerned about a new ballistic missile that could hit a US aircraft carrier 3,200km (2,000 miles) out to sea.
The buzz online about the airforce has been images of what appear to be a Chinese J-20 stealth fighter prototype. The US believes China is years away from deploying it which would be a rival to Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor, the world’s only stealth fighter designed to evade detection by radar. But it has consistently underestimated China’s ability to develop new technologies.
Mr Liang played down China’s military technology. “The efforts that we placed on the research and development of weapons systems is by no means targeted at any third country and it will by no means threaten any other countries in the world,” he said.
The world’s biggest army: how the PLA is organised
Some facts and figures about China’s military:
- The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the world's biggest military force with three million members, of whom 2.25 million constitute a standing army.
- The PLA is divided into five branches – the army; navy; airforce; the second artillery corps which controls China's nuclear and conventional strategic missiles; and the reserves.
- The PLA is controlled by the central military commission, of which China's president Hu Jintao is the head.
- The head of the military is one of the three branches of supreme authority in China, the others being the presidency and head of the Communist Party.
- Only when a leader has all three titles can he be said to be truly in control.
- China also has the People's Armed Police. This organisation is largely responsible for internal security matters and is administered by the central military commission and the ministry of public security.
- There is conscription in China but there are always more candidates prepared to join than there are places because of the enormous population, so it has never been enforced.