The US’ top military officer criticized China yesterday for cutting off military contacts with the US, saying dialogue could help dispel concerns over Beijing’s arms buildup.
Speaking to US troops in South Korea, Admiral Mike Mullen said China’s spending on high-tech weaponry, including anti-ship missiles, had raised questions about its intentions in the region.
However, the absence of a regular dialogue with China’s military made it difficult to address those concerns, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
“It’s really important that we know each other in ways that we just don’t right now because our engagement with them is very much off-and-on,” Mullen told troops from the US Army’s 2nd Infantry Division at Camp Red Cloud.
He said every country had a right to bolster its armed forces.
“But it’s the specifics of some of it, that you know I’d like to have a conversation to see where they’re going. Right now I can’t do that,” he said.
China suspended military relations in January after Washington unveiled a US$6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan. In May, China rebuffed a planned visit to Beijing in June by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Mullen said China’s military had made “a fairly significant investment in high-end equipment” including satellites, aircraft, anti-ship missiles and a planned aircraft carrier group.
He called the move a “strategic shift, where they are moving from a focus on their ground forces to focus on their navy, and their maritime forces and their air force.”
“I have moved from being furious about what they’re doing to being concerned about what they’re doing,” he said.
US officials worry that China’s more assertive stance in the Pacific Ocean and its anti-ship missile arsenal, capable of striking aircraft carriers, could undercut US naval power in the region.
Mullen’s comments came a day after he defended plans for joint US-South Korean naval exercises in the Yellow Sea in coming months, despite misgivings in China.
“Certainly the intent of those exercises, as clearly stated, is to focus on stability on the [Korean] peninsula. It is not intended one way or another to send the Chinese a message,” Mullen told reporters on Tuesday aboard his plane bound for Seoul.
“The Yellow Sea specifically is an international body of water and the United States has always reserved the right to operate in those international waters,” he said.
“I hear what the Chinese are saying with respect to that, but in fact we have exercised in the Yellow Sea for a long time. And I fully expect we will do so in the future,” he said.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province