PLA admiral’s speech raises questions in the US

Taipei Times ^ | 6/10/2010 | William Lowther

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

A senior Chinese admiral delivered a three-minute “rant” to 65 visiting US officials in Beijing last month, in which he said that US arms sales to Taiwan proved that Washington viewed China as an enemy. Since then, US diplomats and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have tried to portray the remarks by Rear Admiral Guan Youfei as at odds with the thinking of the rest of the Chinese government.

But in a Washington Post report published on Tuesday, Post reporter John Pomfret interviewed a wide range of experts, officials and military officers in China who indicated that Guan’s speech on May 24 as part of a two-day US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue represented the mainstream views of the Chinese Communist Party.

It was the first time that this had been reported in the US.

“Perhaps the real outliers might be those in China’s government who want to side with the United States,” the Post said.

“Guan’s speech underscored that 31 years after the United States and China normalized relations, there remains a deep distrust in Beijing. That the United States is trying to keep China down is a central part of the party’s catechism and a foundation of its claims to legitimacy,” the paper said.

Despite intense efforts, Gates was unable to secure an invitation to visit Beijing when he was in Asia last week and blamed elements within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for blocking an invitation, which the civilian leadership wanted to deliver.

[GeronL]

That is the thinking of the Chinese government who have always viewed the US as the enemy too.