US military ties with China have been slow to recover from the forced landing of a US Navy spy plane on a Chinese island more than two years ago. But the prospect of closer military relations and Washington's push to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear program are among the chief reasons for a trip to Asia by the top US general.
Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left Saturday for a tour that will take him to Japan, Mongolia, China and Australia.
Myers' predecessor, Army General John Shalikashvili, visited China in May 1997. No other Joint Chiefs chairman has gone to China since the early 1980s.
China is wary of US intentions in Asia and the Pacific, most notably regarding Taiwan.
"Myers' trip comes at a good time in US-China relations," but also at a time of substantial risk of a confrontation over Taiwan's ambitions for independence, said Ashton Carter, who was assistant secretary of defense for international security policy during former president Bill Clinton's administration.
Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian has declared that an immediate security threat from China exists. He has announced that the island will hold a referendum on March 20 -- the day Chen seeks re-election -- on whether China should stop pointing hundreds of missiles at Taiwan.
For China, even referendums on mundane issues threaten to lead Taiwan to an independence vote, which Beijing has threatened to stop by force. To the chagrin of conservatives in Congress, the administration has criticized the referendum plans.
US President George W. Bush's Pentagon has been highly skeptical of the value of military cooperation with China.
Relations sank to new lows in April 2001, when Chinese fighter pilot Wang Wei flew his jet too close to the US reconnaissance EP-3E that it had been shadowing over international waters off China's Hainan island.
The two planes collided. Wang's plunged into the South China Sea and he became a national hero. The Navy plane had to make an unauthorized emergency landing on Hainan. The Chinese military kept the 24-member crew in custody for 11 days.
At that point, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ended military contacts with China. Relations have improved only gradually since.
Unlike his two most immediate predecessors at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld has not visited China. He did meet his counterpart, Geneal Cao Gangchuan, in Washington in October.
Before Myers, the highest-ranking US military officer to visit China under Bush has been Admiral Thomas Fargo, commander of US Pacific Command. In a speech at Shanghai's Fudan University in December 2002, Fargo said it was important to promote "a genuine exchange of thought" and consistency in the relationship.
The state of US-China military relations has been anything but consistent 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 short-lived.
In 1996 China lobbed missiles near Taiwan during the island's first direct presidential election. In response, Clinton sent two aircraft carrier groups to the vicinity of the Taiwan Strait. It was the largest US naval movement in the Asia-Pacific region since the Vietnam War.
High-level Chinese military visits to Washington were canceled after that. Relations improved until satellite-guided bombs from an Air Force B-2 bomber hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the US air war over Kosovo in May 1999. China broke off military contacts with the US after that.
Carter, co-director with Perry of the Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project, said in an interview Friday that most of China's leaders believe US-China relations have never been better.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS