Posted on: Tuesday, May 7, 2002

EDITORIAL
U.S.-China military exchanges welcome

At least since Adm. Charles Larson was CINCPAC in the early 1990s, the commanders of Pacific Forces have uniformly sought military-to-military exchanges with their counterparts in the Chinese military.

At times, politicians have sought to stifle these exchanges, especially when they've felt the need to project a tough or warlike image. But the folks we entrust to do the actual shooting when the need arises know better.

The last thing they want to see is a war get started through misunderstanding or failure to communicate. Transparency between Chinese and American officers already has done much to promote predictability and trust between the two sides.

Both countries have military operations that can brush up against one another, and knowing each other's intentions can prevent mistakes. Certainly the EP-3 incident a year ago, in which a Chinese pilot was killed when his fighter collided with a U.S. surveillance aircraft, could have been avoided with better military-to-military exchange.

Almost counterintuitively, the military exchanges were canceled amid the bad feelings that followed that incident. Clearly, the incident spoke to the need for more such exchanges.

So, in an otherwise bland visit last week in which China's Vice President Hu Jintao and his hosts were careful not to depart from their prepared scripts, it's good news that the visit may result in a stepped- up schedule of military exchanges. That will promote stability in the Asia-Pacific region, and keep our soldiers and sailors a lot safer.