A China-US hotline for peace
America's senior military officer, General Peter Pace of the Marine Corps, has just completed a visit to China. During the trip, he nudged along gradually expanding contacts between Chinese and US military leaders that included seeing weapons and command posts that had been off limits to Americans.
At the same time, the general, who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cautioned the Chinese in public not to miscalculate American capabilities or intentions. General Pace proposed that the US and China set up a 'hotline' between Beijing and Washington to head off potential confrontations.
In an interview in Hawaii, General Pace said the Chinese 'treated me better, I think, than they've treated any other US officer'. He said 'there were five or six things they had me do that no one else did', including climbing into a Russian-designed SU-27 fighter plane and riding in a T-99 tank.
General Pace was invited into a Chinese general's office where China's war maps were displayed, and then went into a command post with more displays and a table showing the disposition of Chinese forces. 'They were very open about that,' General Pace said.
Over the past decade, the US and China have slowly increased military exchanges, although they were interrupted in 2001 when a Chinese fighter plane collided with a US EP-3 reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea.
Even so, American leaders have long complained that the People's Liberation Army lacked transparency, meaning that it sought to keep secret budgets, arms development and procurement, and strategy and doctrine.
In China, the general said he wanted to engage not only senior Chinese officers but also junior officers and enlisted people so 'you can build the understanding that will avoid miscalculation'.
And he thought his message had got through. In a wrap-up discussion with a Chinese general, General Pace said he heard some of his own words repeated back to him and was told why the Chinese 'were anxious to have co-operation'.
General Pace added, however, that 'it would also be good to be able to just pick up the phone' to talk to Chinese officers. 'Now that I've been there,' he said, 'it's not a cold phone call, it's a face and a name and a voice that you recognise.'
That recalled the lament of Admiral Joseph Prueher, who led the Pacific Command in 1996 when China fired missiles towards Taiwan. Most Sino-US military exchanges had ceased after the PLA massacred students pleading for democracy in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Admiral Prueher said publicly that he lacked the names of China's military leaders and did not have a phone number to call them and determine what they were up to, while warning them not to misjudge the potential for an American response. Instead, amid rising tensions, the admiral deployed two aircraft carrier taskforces to the sea east of Taiwan to warn the Chinese to back off.
Richard Halloran is a former New York Times foreign correspondent in Asia and military correspondent in Washington
