The US military's top commander said here Friday that he did not believe China's armed forces were a threat and played down the prospects for hostilities in the Taiwan strait.
Following complaints from Washington over China's rising military budget and a satellite-killing test, General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said his four-day visit was aimed at boosting US-Sino military ties.
"Clearly, both the United States and China have enormous military capacity, but equally clearly neither country has the intent to go to war with the other. So absent of intent, I don't find threat," Pace said.
"We should not focus on how to fight each other but how to prevent military action. That is what my government is focused on, and that is what my Chinese counterparts here have said their government is focused on."
Pace, who arrived Thursday, said he had discussed the sensitive topic of Taiwan with the Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Guo Boxiong, Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan and Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing. "It is not surprising that in each of the meetings, the issue of Taiwan came up. It is clearly a fundamental issue with China," he said.
Pace said he had repeated President George W. Bush's position that the US leader "would not support Taiwan independence" and that Washington wanted the issue to be handled peacefully. Taiwan has been one of the biggest obstacles to better Sino-US ties, with the United States concerned that China may carry out its threat to retake the island by force if Taipei should move towards independence.
Pace's visit follows a US announcement last month that it planned to provide more than 400 missiles to Taiwan, apparently to counter China's growing military force aimed at the island territory. China protested the planned sale. And the trip comes after the United States repeatedly expressed concerns over China's successful knocking out of one of its ageing satellites with a ballistic missile in January.
The United States and the former Soviet Union had already conducted such tests, but China's effort resulted in international concerns over a global race to weaponise space.
Senior US officials have spoken critically of China's military budget, expressing concerns that the Chinese are under-reporting its size and that it is expanding too quickly. China announced this month a 17.8-percent rise in military spending for this year to 45 billion dollars.
US Vice President Dick Cheney said last month that China's military build-up and the satellite-killing weapon were "not consistent with China's stated goal of a 'peaceful rise'." Pace said he raised the issue of the satellite test in his meetings with the Chinese, but avoided in his comments to the press any of the harsher rhetoric used by Cheney and others.
"I used the example of the anti-satellite test as how sometimes the international community can be confused, because it was a surprise that China did that and it wasn't clear what their intent wass," Pace said of his meetings His Chinese counterparts did not explain why they had decided to carry out such a test, nor what their intent was, he said.
"One of the reasons we have to work harder between the two militaries is to make sure, as best we can, we tell each other what we are doing, why we are doing it and how we're doing it," Pace said. "The biggest fear I have of the future is miscalculation and misunderstanding based on disinformation."
Pace said the two sides discussed setting up a hotline between the two militaries, boosting exchanges through joint military exercises and setting up an exchange programme between military academies.