12:44 GMT, October 27, 2009 At the invitation of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, General Xu Caihou, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will pay an official visit to the U.S. from October 24 to November 3. Recently, Qian Lihua, director general of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Ministry of National Defense of the PRC, received the interview of the PLA Daily on Xu Caihou’s U.S. visit.

Reporter: Military transparency is a frequently-mentioned topic between China and the U.S. A foreign medium reported recently that the U.S. side expected Vice Chairman Xu Caihou’s visit very much and hoped that this visit could enhance China’s military transparency in fields including military spending. What’s your view on military transparency?

Qian Lihua: In fact, transparency was no longer an issue judging whether a certain country has or hasn’t reached the standards of transparency in the current international community, but a strategy-related and strategic issue. I’d like to reiterate China’s stand on transparency here.

Firstly, the transparency of strategic intent is the most important transparency. We hold that military transparency is reflected in the transparency of strategic intent and military ability, of which the transparency of strategic intent is the most fundamental and most important transparency and an indicator judging whether a country constitutes threat to other countries or international community. China’s strategic intent is completely transparent. The transparency of China’s strategic intent and national defense policy is rather high in the world. We can clearly see China’s strategic intent of peaceful development, the China’s national defense policy defensive in nature and the basic guideline of maintaining world peace and promoting common development from the China's White Paper on National Defense.

Secondly, military transparency is based on mutual-trust. Transparency is a relative concept and all countries decide the manners and principles of transparency independently according to their own national interests. As military secretes count on national security, no country is absolutely transparent in military. However, the military transparency between countries must be based on mutual-trust to a great degree. For example, the U.S. side enhanced the material military ties with Taiwan and sold advanced arms to Taiwan and the U.S. warships and aircraft frequently appeared in China's exclusive economic waters. These seriously damaged China-U.S. mutual trust and hindered the improvement of military transparency between the two countries.

Thirdly, the Chinese government lays stress on military transparency all along. China regards improving military transparency as an important mean for enhancing Chinese people’s understanding of national defense and army building, enhancing the understanding of peoples of the world on China’s national defense policy, and promoting the mutual trust and strengthening cooperation between Chinese military and militaries of other countries. In recent years, China continued to strengthen the bilateral and multi-lateral strategic consultation and dialogue with relevant countries in security and defense field, participated in international co-operation in such non-traditional security fields as anti-terrorism, maritime search and rescue and naval escort, invited observers of foreign militaries to China to view and emulate military exercises and developed many measures for establishing trust in military fields with related neighbors. The Chinese military also actively carried out bilateral and multi-lateral joint exercises and drills. I wanted to point out specially that the Chinese side has made active efforts in improving the military transparency between China and the U.S., which reflected our sincerity in developing the relations between the Chinese and U.S. militaries. In future, China will continue to devote herself into the cause of boosting the military mutual-trust with other countries, enhancing international peace, security and stability according to its reality.


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