The US' HIGHEST-ranking military officer, General Peter Pace of the Marine Corps, has just completed a visit to China during which he nudged along the gradually expanding contacts between Chinese and US military leaders that included seeing weapons and command posts that before had been off limits to the US.
At the same time, the general, who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cautioned China in public not to miscalculate US capabilities or intentions. Other US officers have done the same, but in private. Pace proposed that the US and China set up a "hot line" between Beijing and Washington to head off potential confrontations.
In an interview in Hawaii on his way back to Washington, Pace said the Chinese "treated me better, I think, than they've treated any other US officer."
"There were five or six things they had me do that no one else did," he said, including climbing into a SU-27 fighter plane and riding in a T-99 tank.
Pace was invited into a Chinese general's office where China's war maps were displayed and then went into a command post with more displays and a table showing the disposition of Chinese forces.
"They were very open about that," Pace said.
Over the last decade, the US and China have slowly increased military exchanges, mostly by the US admirals who have led the Pacific Command from its headquarters in Hawaii.
Even so, US leaders have long complained that China's People's Liberation Army lacked transparency, meaning it sought to keep secret budgets, arms development and procurement, strategy and doctrine.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told reporters in Washington recently that China's 18 percent increase in defense spending, its anti-satellite missile shot in January and its aggressive submarine operations over the last year added up to "a significant investment in their military forces."
In China, Pace said his comment about miscalculation was not intended as a warning.
"It was really a concern that I just wanted to voice publicly for everybody," he said.
The general said he wanted to engage not only senior Chinese officers but also junior officers and enlisted people so that "you can build the understanding that will avoid miscalculation."
Pace said he thought his message had gotten through. In a wrap-up discussion with a Chinese general, Pace said he heard some of his own words repeated back to him.
"I think they took them [his remarks] in the way they were offered, which was a concern that we as military guys have a special responsibility to have as much understanding as possible to prevent miscalculation," he said.
On the hotline, the general suggested it would be a telex or e-mail connection modeled on the hotline between the Soviet Union and the US during the Cold War.
Pace added, however, that "it would also be good to be able to just pick up the phone" to talk with Chinese officers.
"Now that I've been there," he said, "it's not a cold phone call, it's a face and a name and a voice that you recognize."
That recalled the lament of Admiral Joseph Prueher, who led the Pacific Command in 1996 when China lobbed missiles toward Taiwan. Most China-US military exchanges had ceased after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.
Prueher said publicly that he lacked the names of China's military leaders and did not have a telephone number so that he could call to determine what they were up to and to warn them not to misjudge the potential for a US response. Instead, amid rising tensions, the admiral deployed two aircraft carrier task forces to the sea east of Taiwan to warn China to back off.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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