Rumsfeld Will Host Chinese Defense Minister in Pentagon Meeting (Military Exchanges)

Associated Press ^ | Oct 24, 2003 | Robert Burns

[act2]

Rumsfeld Will Host Chinese Defense Minister in Pentagon Meeting

WASHINGTON (AP) - Gen. Cao Gangchuan, the Chinese minister of defense, will meet with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon next week, marking the first high-level Chinese military visit since the collision of a Chinese fighter and a U.S. spy plane in April 2001. Also, Rumsfeld is expecting to meet in early November with Vietnamese Defense Minister Pham Van Tra, who would be the highest-level Vietnamese defense official to visit the Pentagon since before the Vietnam War, according to a defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Rumsfeld's predecessor, William Cohen, made a historic visit to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in March 2000, and the two countries have cooperated for years on recovering the remains of U.S. servicemen killed in the Vietnam War. Nearly 1,800 servicemen are still unaccounted for.

The United States restored diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995.

Rumsfeld commented on the Chinese minister's visit in an interview published Friday by The Washington Times, but it has not been officially announced. Rumsfeld told the Times that Cao's visit to the Pentagon is part of the administration's policy of engaging communist China. He described military exchanges with China as "appropriate and logical and beneficial from our standpoint."

Kurt Campbell, who was deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia affairs during the Clinton administration, said he believes Rumsfeld feels compelled to establish closer military-to-military relations with China mainly because of the role China can play in helping the United States, South Korea and Japan persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

Campbell said he doubts that Rumsfeld will reciprocate by visiting China. "Rumsfeld has canceled more trips to Asia than he has gone on," he said.

James Mulvenon, a China expert at the RAND Corp., a think tank, said he believes the White House has prodded Rumsfeld's Pentagon to move toward a more regularized relationship with China's military.

Cao also will visit the headquarters of U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. The head of the Pacific Command, Adm. Thomas Fargo, toured China last December as the highest-ranking U.S. military officer to visit since the April 2001 incident involving the collision of the U.S. and Chinese planes.

After a Chinese fighter veered into a Navy EP-3 surveillance plane in international airspace over the Sea of Japan - resulting in the death of the Chinese pilot and an emergency landing by the damaged American plane - Rumsfeld cut off military-to-military relations for a time.

The administration was angered by China's decision to imprison the 24 crew members for 11 days on Hainan Island. After releasing them, China refused to permit the United States to fly the damaged plane off the island. Instead it was removed in pieces and reassembled in the United States.

Military relations between the United States and China have been bumpy in recent decades. Ties were severed after China's army-led crackdown in 1989 on student protests at Tiananmen Square.

A 1994 visit to Beijing by then-Defense Secretary William Perry was meant to put relations back on track, but that effort was interrupted by tensions over Taiwan, an island nation that China views as a renegade province and has threatened to attack it if the island declares independence.

The last time a Chinese defense minister visited Washington was in December 1996. During that visit, Gen. Chi Haotian went not only to the Pentagon but also to the White House for a meeting with Clinton. Mulvenon said he thinks it is highly doubtful that President Bush will agree to see Cao in the White House, even though the Chinese are understood to have asked for such a meeting.

[GO65]

You raise some good points. I wish I knew the solution. I'd argue I suppose that the first defense would be to get our own fiscal house in order so that we don't have to rely on the Chinese to fund our debt. That means getting spending in line with revenue, and curtailing efforts to add new spending. Unfortunately the political climate in the U.S. doesn't currently allow for such a move on the federal level, though it is exactly the approach we've seen in many states (typically where mandated by law).