Top US Navy officials welcomed China’s first-time attendance at a 113-nation naval forum on Wednesday, but made clear that despite progress in US-Chinese military interaction, more work is needed to avoid incidents that could trigger a crisis.
Chinese navy chief Admiral Wu Shengli’s (吳勝利) participation in the 21st International Seapower Symposium comes less than a month after Washington formally protested what it said was a “dangerous intercept” of a navy surveillance plane by a Chinese fighter pilot in international air space off China’s coast.
US officials said the Chinese fighter flew within a few meters of the US P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft several times and then did a barrel roll over it. The US plane was more than 215km east of Hainan Island, the site of a sensitive Chinese submarine base.
China has dismissed the criticism as groundless and said the pilot had kept a safe distance.
Top US Navy officer Admiral Jonathan Greenert said Wu’s attendance at the forum in Newport, Rhode Island, was “a great, great signal” following China’s decision to send ships this summer for the first time to the US-hosted Rim of the Pacific exercises, the largest such multinational naval event.
Greenert said that China hosted a naval symposium in Qingdao in April where more than 20 countries agreed to guidelines on how their navies should react to avoid a crisis at sea, a code Greenert said was “starting to reap some fruit.”
However, Greenert and US Navy Secretary Ray Mabus also said more efforts were needed to keep interactions between US and Chinese militaries professional, to ensure they avoid a miscalculation that could provoke an international incident.
“We want to engage with ... China. We want to engage with them operationally; we want to engage with them in terms of exercises,” Mabus told reporters.
“They need to bear the responsibility of a power their size and they need to be a part of this coalition to keep the world’s sea lanes open, to ensure freedom of navigation, to make sure that there are no incidents that can escalate,” the US Navy secretary added.
Mabus said the US military was “very particular” about following accepted protocols so that “everybody knows exactly where our aircraft are [and] everybody knows exactly where our ships are.”
“It’s very dangerous, very problematic when pilots from other countries do not follow those,” Mabus said.
Greenert said he and Wu had discussed many of the challenges they share, from bringing new ships online to recruiting the right people. However, he also said “we disagree on some things,” such as some Chinese territorial claims.
“There’s a particular area that we disagree on,” Greenert said. “We believe though, Admiral Wu Shengli and I, that our job is to make sure there’s no miscalculation here, that each others’ professional mariners act professionally regardless of governmental or other disputes.”
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