Boost for Sino-US military ties

The two sides, therefore, need a great deal of patience and political will to build mutual trust and provide mutual strategic assurance, which can be achieved through high-level visits, institutionalized dialogues and informal discussions between defense leaders and strategic planners. A shared belief that "cooperation is better than confrontation" will help motivate earnest efforts to better understand each other and to better accommodate each other's interests and responsibilities.

Second, if both militaries realize that their greatest shared interest is to curb their differences, avoid crises and manage risks, preventing untoward incidents would be their top priority. This may not sound like an ambitious enough goal, but it is a sound way if starting practical cooperation between the two militaries, especially because trust building is a lengthy process.

Both militaries can work together to set up "rules of the road" for ships and airplanes when they operate in proximity in and above international waters. They can also work out a mechanism of communication to reduce the risk of miscalculation and thus the risk of a conflict.

Third, the two militaries should have more frequent engagements in different fields and at different levels. Currently, their engagements include high-level visits, institutionalized talks and exchanges in functional areas.

High-level visits are of utmost importance in trust building and for setting the tone for future relationship. They can be enhanced by informal meetings between senior defense leaders to discuss strategic issues in depth with minimum consideration of reciprocity and formality.

Institutionalized talks between the two sides are crucial to address each other's concerns and to come up with deliverable results. They can be fleshed out with special working groups, and more extensive and frequent discussions on thorny and immediate issues.

Functional exchanges make up the substance of a relation, which should be expanded not only to cover military medical teams, army bands and port calls by ships, but also to focus on training, logistics and joint exercises.

One achievement of the Xi-Obama Summit is the PLA Navy's acceptance of the US invitation to participate in the 2014 RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) exercise.

The exercise will provide the two navies with a rare opportunity to cooperate in a multilateral setting. And although in US-sponsored multilateral exercises participating countries are categorized as observers, non-allies and allies and "assigned" roles accordingly, the PLA Navy expects its participation to be more substantial than just a symbolic appearance.

It is hoped that the PLA Navy's participation in the exercise could be a model of positive and constructive engagement between the two militaries and that there will be an earnest effort on the part of the US to incorporate the PLA positively into regional military affairs.

The author is a major general and director of the Center on China-America Defense Relations, the Academy of Military Science.