Long Debate over the US Challenge } 671
When Sino-US ties were normalized, China was just opening up
its door to the world. China is now one of the world’s major powers.
Sino-US relations have come through many stages and come a long way.
However, 2010 was a turbulent year, and we are still facing lots of chal-
lenges. Leaders of the two countries must have the courage to establish
a framework for this important relationship, one that can stabilize it.^63
Beijing’s push to stabilize ties with the United States began by welcoming
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in January 2011. Beijing’s agreement
to Gates’ visit was a response to a request by Obama at a June 2010 G 20
Summit.^64 Hu Jintao prepared for Gates’ visit by admonishing the PLA for
allowing its officers to speak their own minds on sensitive issues.^65 Hu made
clear to PLA leaders that China could ill afford a new round of tension with
the United States. One of Gates’ key messages in Beijing was that Washington
would not allow the PLA to achieve supremacy in the Western Pacific. Despite
economic woes and cuts in defense spending, the United States was investing
in an array of new capabilities—a new generation of jamming technology,
seaborne unmanned aircraft, better radar—designed to counter the PLA’s
rapidly improving anti-access, area-denial capabilities intended to deny the
United States access to international waters near China.^66
The PLA carried out Hu’s orders to receive and talk with Gates, but it also
rejected his proposal to stabilize the US-PRC military relationship by making
it “consistent and not subject to shifting political winds,” as Gates put it.
Ending the pattern of military relations being interrupted for months or even
years whenever the PLA was especially unhappy with some US move was a
high US priority.^67 The PLA understood that the United States wanted mili-
tary-to-military exchanges, and refused to compromise its ability to punish
Washington for transgressions such as arms sales to Taiwan. As Defense
Minister Liang Guanglie told a press conference during Gates’ visit: “US arms
sales to Taiwan seriously damage China’s core interests. And we do not want
to see that happen again.”^68 The PLA also underlined its rapidly improving
capabilities by conducting during Gates’ visit the first public testing of a new
stealth fighter, the J-20, a warplane that closely resembled the US F-22 Raptor
stealth fighter and represented a major advance for China’s power projection
capabilities. The first public display of its capabilities was given wide media
attention, with photos of it appearing on the website of Global Times shortly
after the plane’s public debut. When Gates raised the question of the J-20
in a meeting with Hu Jintao, it became evident that none of the civilians in
the room had been informed about the test. American officials surmised that
Hu Jintao, the only civilian official with authority over the PLA, had been
kept uninformed about the test, and that the test was an act of PLA defiance
against Hu and the civilian leadership’s overly soft policy toward the United
States.^69