Another go at being friends
A troubled year gives way to handshakes, but tensions between the United States and China are likely to grow
CHINA’S President Hu Jintao arrives in America on January 18th for a welcome at the White House, full of pomp and pageantry, that American presidents seldom lay on even for the closest of friends. After an unusually rocky year in their relations, both China and the United States hope for respite. But mutual wariness is growing, thanks not least to China’s hawkish army.
The role in Chinese policymaking of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA, which includes the navy and air force) is only dimly understood by outsiders. But the PLA is clearly far less eager than the civilian leadership to mix with America. It needed persuading to acquiesce to a visit to Beijing by America’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, from January 9th to 12th, his first to the country in three years.
China’s leaders apparently hoped that Mr Gates’s trip would help restore a semblance of normality to the two countries’ ties as Mr Hu prepared for his American visit. Mr Hu is no America-lover himself, but like his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, he enjoys being received by the superpower with full ceremonial honours. When Mr Hu last went to Washington, DC, in 2006, China called it a state visit but the White House called it an official one, implying a slightly lesser grade. This time both agree it is a state one, which means all the razzmatazz of a dinner at the White House.
Allowing Mr Gates to visit at all was a concession. China had cut off top-level military exchanges with America in January 2010, in response to Barack Obama’s approval of $6.4 billion of arms sales to Taiwan. Mr Gates had hoped to visit China last June. After being rebuffed, he said he was “disappointed” that the PLA had “not seen the same potential benefits from this kind of military-to-military relationship” as the country’s civilian leaders.
Despite China’s increasingly assertive military posture in the western Pacific, a region where America’s armed forces have long held sway, communication between the two sides is minimal at the best of times. During Mr Gates’s last visit to Beijing, his hosts agreed to set up a hotline between the Pentagon and China’s defence ministry. In 2009 it proved useless when tempers flared over a standoff between Chinese boats and an American surveillance vessel in the South China Sea.
Just as worryingly, communication between China’s leadership and the PLA appeared to Americans to be faulty, of which a striking indication came while Mr Gates was in Beijing.
During a meeting with Mr Hu, Mr Gates mentioned the test flight earlier in the day of a Chinese stealth fighter, the J-20, China’s first aircraft supposed to evade radar. Speculation about progress on the highly secretive project has intensified with the appearance online of photographs of a J-20 at an airfield. The flight on January 11th, video of which appeared on unofficial websites, was the first ever reported. But Mr Hu and other officials in the room appeared to be unaware of it, a Pentagon official claims.
If so, an interpretation is that this was a slap to Mr Hu, who as chairman of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission is supposed to be in charge of the armed forces. Mr Gates said later he had had “concerns over time” about the PLA acting independently of the political leadership. All the more important, he said, to set up a security-related dialogue between the two countries involving both civilian and military officials.
Mr Gates wants a regular forum at which the two sides discuss issues such as nuclear weapons, missile defence, cyber-warfare and space. The Chinese show polite interest, but have given no commitment. Michael Swaine of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says such talks are not bound to take place; the two countries’ armed forces are growing “increasingly suspicious” of one another.
A chief Pentagon concern is China’s development and purchase of missiles making it more difficult for American aircraft carriers to operate in the western Pacific. The missiles include the DF-21D, a medium-range ballistic missile. In December the head of the United States Pacific Command, Admiral Robert Willard, said that the DF-21D had reached “initial operating capability”. The weapon would use data fed by satellites and other surveillance devices to home in on a moving carrier more than 1,500km (930 miles) offshore. Pentagon officials say work on the DF-21D (which would be the first such missile deployed by any army) and the J-20 fighter has progressed faster than they had expected. China is also reportedly close to deploying its first aircraft carrier, a refitted ex-Soviet ship. It may be a long time before any of these can challenge America’s military domination of the Pacific, but they may constrain what the United States can do in waters around China—and Taiwan.
Of the three developments, the DF-21D is the greatest worry to the Americans. Their Aegis missile defence system, deployed to protect American carrier groups, is designed to track a missile’s trajectory from launch. The DF-21D is supposed to be able to change course in mid-flight so as to evade Aegis interceptors. Lockheed Martin, which makes the Aegis system, is trying to come up with a fix. As for the J-20, some scepticism is in order. Although the design has stealth characteristics, its large nose canards, big engine intakes and fixed-thrust nozzles suggest the Chinese have a long way to go before they have a plane that is close to America’s F-22—call them the PLA’s “three shames”.
In America Mr Hu will be at China’s usual pains to stress it wants only peace. He will highlight China’s “soft power”, a concept he began publicly embracing in 2007. Mr Hu plans to visit a Chinese-owned factory making car parts and a school where Chinese is taught with support from China. Yet any cheer Mr Hu generates between the two governments could prove short-lived. Qu Xing of the China Institute of International Studies says the visit will mark the end of a downturn in relations. But, he says, unless America learns to respect China’s “core interests”, another will surely come.
Wary detente between China and America: Another go at being friends | The Economist
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