China freezes military ties with U.S.

The Pentagon’s military-exchange program with China for 2010 was canceled earlier this year because of Beijing’s anger at arms sales to Taiwan, and military ties remain in deep freeze after the unusually combative exchange in Singapore last week between a Chinese general and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

In remarks to a security conference June 4, Mr. Gates defended U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as legal under U.S. law and carried out carefully by successive administrations.

Mr. Gates said he hoped Chinese opposition to arms sales to the island that Beijing views as a renegade province “will go away.”

“But we will maintain our obligations and, frankly, I would very much like to … see the military-to-military relationship cease being the sole focus of the response to these sales because I think that there is great opportunity and great benefit in a greater dialogue between us,” Mr. Gates said.

The problem, according to the defense secretary, is that the Chinese military is disunited with senior Communist Party leaders, who appear more open to military exchanges.

Of the Chinese military, he said: “I think they are reluctant to engage with us on a broad level. The [People’s Liberation Army] is significantly less interested in this relationship than the political leadership of China.”

However, a senior Chinese general confronted Mr. Gates at the conference and stated that China was not to blame for the differences and blamed the United States for turning China into an enemy through the arms sales to Taiwan.

Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, director of China’s National Defense University, a frequent stop for U.S. military visitors, made the unusual public attack on the United States at the Singapore conference, stating that U.S. arms sales, totaling more than $12 billion in offers since 2008, are meant “to prevent the unification of China.”

“I believe this sort of arms sale sends to the Chinese the wrong signal; that is, the Chinese are taking the Americans as partners as well as friends, while you Americans take the Chinese as the enemy,” he said.

Mr. Gates was snubbed by Beijing after he had sought to visit China during his Asian trip last week. China’s government refused to permit the stopover. The snub came despite comments to U.S. reporters by aides to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton who said China was prepared to accept Mr. Gates’ travel.

The events of the last several weeks are the latest installment in a long-running effort by the Pentagon to mollify the Communist Party-ruled military through a series of exchanges, meetings and ship visits involving senior and mid level military officers.

The problem, according to officials close to the program, is that the United States sees the exchanges as a way to develop friendly relations, while China’s military has used the exchanges for intelligence-gathering and technology identification for its major military buildup.

“The Pentagon is totally naive about this relationship,” said a defense official involved in the program.

An annual Pentagon report to Congress on military exchanges with China’s People’s Liberation Army reveals that the Chinese military has been granted access to U.S. military expertise despite a legal prohibition on exchanges that could bolster Beijing’s power projection capabilities.

The exchanges also provided Chinese military visitors with a look at key strategic communications, logistics and supply capabilities, management methods and tactical combat operations, as well as nuclear policy and strategy, according to a review of the programs.

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