Unease Mounting, China and US to Open Military Talks - New York Times

BEIJING â€" Talks of a limited nature on the military relationship between China and the United States â€" an arena where each side views the intentions of the other with mounting unease â€" open here Wednesday as a prelude to a wider ranging economic and strategic dialogue involving Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner with their Chinese counterparts.

China is increasingly suspicious of what it views as Washington’s stepped-up spying by American planes and ships along the Chinese coast, and the United States is disquieted by China’s growing array of weaponry, analysts on both sides say.

The two nations have been unable to agree on a serious agenda for military talks despite escalating tensions in the Asia and Pacific region as China presses territorial claims in the East and South China Seas and the United States fortifies long-standing alliances from Australia to the Philippines.

One of a handful of forums on military affairs, known as the Strategic and Security Dialogue, the meetings will be limited to a one-day session Wednesday that will cover two subjects, cyber warfare and maritime issues, Obama administration officials said.

The broader high level talks scheduled to start Thursday with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Geithner are likely to be strained in public, and dominated behind the scenes by the escape of the blind human rights lawyer, Chen Guancheng, apparently into American protection in Beijing. But both sides have plowed ahead with the diplomatic agenda since Mr. Chen’s dramatic journey to Beijing from his house arrest in the countryside.

The Obama administration has remained virtually silent on Mr. Chen, refusing to confirm that he is in their hands, and steadily moving the choreography forward for what the Chinese consider “all weather” talks involving hundreds of diplomats and officials at the Diaoyutai State Guest House complex dotted with lakes and willow trees in Beijing.

Mrs. Clinton is due to arrive in the Chinese capital at 9 a.m. on Wednesday.

Washington’s regard for the Chinese government’s sensitivity may have helped the leadership in Beijing to remain outwardly calm about the Chen case, which comes at a time of political upheaval in the aftermath of the dismissal of Bo Xilai, a member of the Politburo.

Even before the Chen case erupted there were few expectations of specific outcomes for the economic and strategic talks where every item on the agenda, from North Korea to the global economy, has been painstakingly negotiated in advance.

Mrs. Clinton said in Washington before her departure on Monday that she would raise human rights during her visit.

Until Mr. Chen’s case complicated the atmosphere, human rights were expected to play little part, and were not a formal part of the talks. Human rights talks between China and the United States are accorded a separate dialogue at a different time of year.

Still, the assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor, Michael H. Posner, who has pressed Mr. Chen’s case, is a member of her delegation. He was scheduled to accompany Mrs. Clinton before Mr. Chen’s escape.

In the military talks, Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns and the acting under secretary of defense for policy, James Miller, will lead the American delegation, and Gen. Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, is head of the Chinese delegation.

With the discussion generally limited to cyber warfare and maritime issues, the talks will not include space weaponry or missile defense, two areas where the Chinese are concentrating military expenditure, Obama administration officials said.

In a recent report on the American military relationship with China, Shirley A. Kan, a specialist in Asian security at the Congressional Research Service, wrote that China’s “reduced appreciation for military to military exchanges has accompanied its rising assertiveness.” In an example of the rocky relationship, she noted that when Adm. Mike Mullen, the recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited China last year he was the first chairman to do so since 2007.

Scott Harold, an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation, who is studying the military relationship between China and the United States, echoed that view. “There is a mutual suspicion by each side of the others growing capabilities,” he said.

The Chinese had acquired or were developing a variety of weapons and technologies that would enable them to put into practice the doctrine of “anti-access, anti- denial,” he said. The basic idea is to block American access to strategic waterways, particularly the seas off China’s coast.

Among the inventory of weapons to advance the doctrine were ultra quiet submarines, advance surface vessels equipped with anti-ship cruise missiles, and the testing of ballistic missiles able to strike an aircraft carrier, Mr. Harold said.

As well, China had built an advanced cyber program designed to disable a potential enemy’s command and control capabilities, he said.