Tue, Jun 05, 2001 page1

• US turning cold on contacts with the Chinese military

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has cut off nearly all of the Pentagon's contacts with the Chinese armed forces in a move that is prompting concern among China experts within the US military establishment.

  The Pentagon says that it is conducting a review of seminars, visits and other contacts with China and that no sweeping decisions have been made.

  But Pentagon memoranda indicate that Rumsfeld is personally deciding which contacts should be allowed with the Chinese and that he has rejected most of them.

  Under Rumsfeld's policy, no direct contacts between US and Chinese military officers have been authorized in recent months.

  A trip to China by Vice Admiral Paul Gaffney, the president of the US National Defense University, which had been scheduled for last week, was canceled.

  And Chinese officers are no longer being invited to seminars at the Asian Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, the Pentagon's research center on security issues in that region.

  Rumsfeld authorized US officers to attend multinational seminars on humanitarian operations to which Chinese officers were also invited.

  But the defense secretary issued specific guidance that the US officers were to "minimize contact" with their Chinese counterparts at the April symposia, according to a Pentagon memo obtained by The New York Times.

  Under the new policy, the US is also no longer requesting port calls in Hong Kong, requests that the Pentagon had previously made to reinforce the territory's unique status as a former colonial enclave.

  Senior aides to Rumsfeld said the decisions were intended to signal deep displeasure over China's handling of the collision between a Chinese fighter and a US Navy EP-3, which resulted in an 11-day detention for its crew and weeks of wrangling over the return of the aircraft.

  But even before the collision the Bush administration was taking a more skeptical approach toward China, though it had maintained military-to-military ties.

  And it is not clear how energetically the Pentagon will pursue contacts with the Chinese military, even once the dispute over the EP-3, which remains on Hainan in China, is fully resolved.

  "It is not business as usual," a senior Pentagon official said. "The Bush administration was going on the belief that the relationship was not balanced and that China perhaps was obtaining more access here than we were from our visits there."Rumsfeld's policy worries some former and current US officers. They argue that the interchange with the Chinese military establishment gives the US more insight into Beijing's thinking, develops contacts that may prove useful in the future and contributes to deterrence by showing China the high caliber of the US military.

  H.C. Stackpole III, the retired three-star Marine general and Vietnam war hero who leads the Pentagon-funded Asia-Pacific Security Center, said that cutting off contacts with the Chinese military was counterproductive.

  "I think it ensures that the hard-liners in Beijing have ammunition for an increased arms buildup," he said in an interview. "When you have the kind of position we are taking right now, only one view becomes prevalent. Those in China who do not wish to have the US as an enemy find their voices become muted."

  Bernard "Bud" Cole, a professor at the National Defense University and a retired navy captain, said China's penchant for secrecy about its armed forces makes military exchanges a potentially valuable tool for learning about them.

  "I would agree that the Chinese have more access in the US than we have in China, but we get more out of the relationship," said Cole, who is a leading expert on the Chinese navy.

  Rumsfeld's decisions also suggest that the Pentagon's policy on contacts with the Chinese military is tougher than the Bush administration has previously acknowledged. On April 30, the Pentagon issued a memo instructing the US armed forces to cut ties with Chinese military and civilian officials until further notice.

  After the White House raised concerns, Rumsfeld dismissed the memorandum as the work of a policy aide who had misunderstood his intentions. But Rumsfeld's rulings suggest that the spirit of the initial memo has prevailed after all.

  Asked to comment, Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, Rumsfeld's spokesman, said: "There is a dearth of activity right now. First things first. We need to get the plane back."

  After the plane is returned, Quigley said, Rumsfeld will consider future contacts on the basis of two main factors: whether the US was given reciprocal access and whether the exchanges were of equal value.

  The Pentagon's contacts with the Chinese have a long history. During the Reagan administration, Washington's goal was to contain Soviet power. The US sold arms to the Chinese and provided them with advice on logistics and personnel.

  That policy faded as the Cold War came to a close. And after the crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989, US contacts with the Chinese military were suspended.

  During the Clinton administration, then Defense Secretary William Perry restored the ties.
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