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BEIJING: With President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration just
hours away, China’s military on Tuesday urged the incoming US
administration to remove barriers to bilateral military relations.
“Facing the current difficulties in military
relations, we call for the United States to take concrete measures
to remove the obstacles,” Defense Ministry spokesman Hu Changming
said at a press conference upon the release of China’s sixth white
paper on national defense.
Hu did not specify the nature of these
obstacles, but China has repeatedly demanded that the United States
cut its military links with Taiwan.
Pentagon announced a $6.5 billion arms deal with
Taiwan in October. The deal included 30 Apache attack helicopters
and 330 Patriot missiles.
It was the biggest arms sale to Taiwan since
China and the United States signed the “August 17 Communique” in
1982, in which the United States agreed to gradually reduce its arms
sales to Taiwan.
The white paper also criticized the United
States for continuing to “sell arms to Taiwan in violation of the
principles established in the three Sino-US joint communiques,
causing serious harm to Sino-US relations as well as peace and
stability across the Taiwan Straits.”
Military contacts between the two countries were
active and fruitful before the Taiwan arms sale, Chinese military
officers said.
Apart from frequent exchanges at different
levels, the two defense departments set up hotlines and military
officials got involved in bilateral strategic talks for the first
time last year.
Since the end of a civil war in 1949, China has
viewed Taiwan as a breakaway territory awaiting reunification, by
force if necessary, while the United States has pledged to defend
the island.
Besides China’s decade-long missile build-up
along its southeastern coast facing Taiwan, the United States has
become increasingly concerned with its military modernization
program.
The United States, Japan and other nations have
repeatedly expressed concern about China’s rapid military build-up
in recent years, and accused the Chinese leadership of not being
transparent about its spending.
Reaching out to Beijing
In December, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense David Sedney came to Beijing to try to mend strained
military ties. The visit didn’t produce any substantive result.
During a visit to Beijing early this month,
outgoing US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte met with
China’s Gen. Ma Xiaotian to discuss how to resume bilateral
military exchanges.
Hu said China always valued military relations
with the United States, which were in the common interests of both
nations.
“I noted that President-elect Obama will take
office in a few hours, and the current US Defense Secretary, Robert
Gates, will keep his post.”
“In the new era, I expect the two sides to
make joint efforts to create conditions for the continuous
improvement and development of bilateral military ties,” Hu said.
“Three decades of China-US ties have proved
that their military relations enjoy a solid political foundation
only when each other’s core interests are respected,” Hu said.
According to a policy paper, China’s military
expenditure from 1998 to 2007 increased by 15.9 percent yearly on
average.
China’s defense expenditure in 2007 amounted
to 355.5 billion yuan ($52 billion), only 7.5 percent of US military
spending during the same year, the paper said.
China’s 2007 military expenditure amounted to
1.38 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) during
2007, compared with 4.5 percent in the United States, it added. GDP
is the total cost of all goods and services produced in the country
in a year.
China’s military budget for 2008 was 417.8
billion yuan, a rise of 17.6 percent from the previous year.
Relations with Taiwan
Stressing that the Taiwan issue concerned
China’s fundamental and core interests, the spokesman said current
cross-Straits relations were “moving forward along a peaceful
development track.
“The two sides across the Taiwan Straits
should work together and create conditions for the establishment
of military trust mechanism,” Hu said.
The white paper said the situation across the
Taiwan Straits has “taken a significantly positive turn.”
The paper attributed the improvement to the
failed attempts of what it termed separatist forces seeking
“Taiwan independence” and the progress made in cross-Straits
consultations.
Hu said China has limited deployment of military
forces on the Taiwan Straits based on the nation’s fundamental security
interests. “When the [mainland’s] military deployment is going
to be readjusted will be decided in accordance with changes in the
developing situation across the Taiwan Straits.”
He called for the two sides to step up contacts
and exchanges on military issues “at an appropriate time” and
talk about a military mechanism of mutual trust, in a bid to ease
military concerns and stabilize cross-Straits relations.
-- Xinhua With AFP
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