While House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) is encouraged by China's military efforts to combat piracy, "we clearly still have a long way to go in U.S.-China security relations," the lawmaker said in a statement following the release of the Pentagon's annual report to Congress on Chinese military developments during 2009. Specifically:
Particularly troubling is China's continuing trend of suspending U.S.-China military-to-military contacts, which limits the extent to which our nations can explore areas of cooperation and is not a helpful approach to addressing our differences. There is a dangerous risk that miscommunication and misperception between the U.S. and China could lead to a miscalculation, particularly given China’s increasing military capabilities, and military-to-military contacts are an essential tool to help prevent such instances. These contacts promote understanding, build trust, prevent conflict, and when appropriate, foster cooperation.
I am also concerned by some continuing trends and ambiguities regarding China's military modernization, including its missile buildup across from Taiwan, its maritime activities in the South China Sea, and the steady increase of its power projection capabilities, which do not obviously support China's stated national security objectives. I encourage meaningful action by China to reduce its military presence directly opposite Taiwan and to implement the points made in President Hu Jintao's December 2008 speech governing the future of cross-Strait relations.
While China has taken some steps toward increasing transparency and openness regarding its defense strategy and expenditures in recent years, such steps are modest. China's most recent military budget continues a trend of sustained annual increases, and China's strategic intentions remain opaque. This was highlighted by China's missile intercept test on January 11 and by the cyber-attacks on Google earlier this year. I hope China will increasingly come to view transparency more as a responsibility to accompany the accumulation of national power and less as a transaction to be negotiated.
I continue to believe that China is not necessarily destined to be a threat to the United States and that China doesn’t need to view the United States as a threat to its interests. Yet, conflict between our nations remains a possibility, and we must remain prepared for whatever the future holds in the U.S.-China security relationship. At the same time, we must each be mindful that our actions can produce unintended consequences, and although cooperation is a difficult path, it is ultimately the path that is in both nations' best interest.