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Beijing: The navies of China and the United States completed joint search and rescue exercises in the South China Sea Sunday that were aimed at building confidence between the two militaries, state press said. The Chinese guided-missile destroyer “Zhanjiang” worked with the USS Juneau in the exercises designed to jointly locate a ship in danger and salvage it, Xinhua news agency reported.
The exercise was part of a plan by US President George W. Bush and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao to build up confidence between the two militaries, Chinese officials said earlier.
“In the exercises, the two navies demonstrated very good military skills and strong cooperative spirit,” Xinhua quoted Gu Wengen, commander of China's South China Sea fleet, as saying.
The exercises were the second phase of the first-ever joint Sino-American search-and-rescue maneuvers that began in September in the waters off Hawaii.
“The exercise symbolizes more substantial cooperation between the armed forces of China and the United States, which is very important to the future development of bilateral military relations,” said Qian Lihua, a senior Chinese military official dealing with foreign affairs.
US Commander of the Pacific Fleet Gary Roughead, who attended the exercises, said the maneuvers were crucial toward increasing transparency between the two sides, Xinhua added.
The exercises follow a Chinese rejection of US criticism over Beijing's rapid military expansion.
On the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Hanoi, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday the Asian giant's military build-up “sometimes seemed outsized for China's regional role”.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao countered Saturday that her comments, given in an interview to cable television network CNBC Asia, had no basis in fact.
“I think that position on China is not well grounded because China's defense policy is a kind of policy which is aimed at national security and also safeguarding national sovereignty,” Liu told reporters.
The Pentagon said last week a Chinese submarine came within several kilometers (miles) of a US aircraft carrier last month in international waters, near the Japanese island of Okinawa — a claim denied by Beijing.
China and US military relations nose-dived after a 2001 collision between a US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea and have only begun to recover in recent years.
