The US’ top military officer criticized China yesterday for cutting off military contacts with the US, saying dialogue could help dispel concerns over Beijing’s arms buildup.
Speaking to US troops in South Korea, Admiral Mike Mullen said China’s spending on high-tech weaponry, including anti-ship missiles, had raised questions about its intentions in the region.
However, the absence of a regular dialogue with China’s military made it difficult to address those concerns, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“It’s really important that we know each other in ways that we just don’t right now because our engagement with them is very much off-and-on,” Mullen told troops from the US Army’s 2nd Infantry Division at Camp Red Cloud.
He said every country had a right to bolster its armed forces.
“But it’s the specifics of some of it, that you know I’d like to have a conversation to see where they’re going. Right now I can’t do that,” he said.
China suspended military relations in January after Washington unveiled a US$6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan. In May, China rebuffed a planned visit to Beijing in June by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Mullen said China’s military had made “a fairly significant investment in high-end equipment” including satellites, aircraft, anti-ship missiles and a planned aircraft carrier group.
He called the move a “strategic shift, where they are moving from a focus on their ground forces to focus on their navy, and their maritime forces and their air force.”
“I have moved from being furious about what they’re doing to being concerned about what they’re doing,” he said.
US officials worry that China’s more assertive stance in the Pacific Ocean and its anti-ship missile arsenal, capable of striking aircraft carriers, could undercut US naval power in the region.
Mullen’s comments came a day after he defended plans for joint US-South Korean naval exercises in the Yellow Sea in coming months, despite misgivings in China.
“Certainly the intent of those exercises, as clearly stated, is to focus on stability on the [Korean] peninsula. It is not intended one way or another to send the Chinese a message,” Mullen told reporters on Tuesday aboard his plane bound for Seoul.
“The Yellow Sea specifically is an international body of water and the United States has always reserved the right to operate in those international waters,” he said.
“I hear what the Chinese are saying with respect to that, but in fact we have exercised in the Yellow Sea for a long time. And I fully expect we will do so in the future,” he said.
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