In the South China Sea on Sunday morning the navies of China and
the United States (US) held a joint search-and-rescue
exercise.?
The exercise involved China's guided missile destroyer
Zhanjiang, fuel tanker Dongting Lake, the USS Juneau (LPD 10) and
the USS missile destroyer Fitzgerald. China's Yun-7 transport plane
and the US P-3C patrol plane also participated in the exercise.
The two navies communicated, made fleet formation changes and
carried out search-and-rescue exercises. The idea behind the
exercise was for the two navies to jointly locate a vessel in
danger and salvage it. The two countries took command of different
stages of the exercise.
The Chinese took charge of the communications and search stage
while the US commanded vessels of the two countries to conduct the
rescue. The communications drills had been conducted at Saturday
night in the waters east of the Zhanjiang Port.
The formation drill started at 7:30 AM and China's Zhanjiang and
the USS Juneau completed four formation changes in approximately
one hour.
At 9:25 AM the joint rescue exercise started. The USS Juneau
sent the order to the USS missile destroyer Fitzgerald to search
for the "Dongting Lake", the Chinese ship "in danger", after
receiving Zhanjiang's signal for help. The Yun-7 and P-3C were
asked to assist in locating the ship.
On 10:25 AM the location of the ship "in danger" was confirmed
and approximately 30 minutes later "the fire" on the vessel was
extinguished, "damage" to the ship was repaired and "injured" crew
members received medical treatment.
"In the exercises the two navies demonstrated very good military
skills and strong cooperative spirits," said Gu Wengen, commander
of the South China Sea fleet of the Navy Force of the People's
Liberation Army.
"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, deputy director of the Foreign Affairs
Office of Chinese Defense Ministry.
China has conducted such exercises with other countries
including Britain, France, Pakistan, India, Australia and Thailand.
But Sunday's exercise was the first ever between China and the
US.
In the past exchanges between the Chinese and US armed forces
have mainly focused on high-level visits, personnel communication
and regular consultations.
"The current search-and-rescue exercise is an important and
substantial exchange activity between the two armed forces," Qian
noted. "It has been of vital importance to expanding the Sino-US
military cooperation despite its limited scale in terms of troops
and vessels."
Major General Peng Guangqian, a researcher at the Academy of
Military Sciences, said the choice of search-and-rescue as the
content of the exercise showed a trend towards more substantial
cooperation between the two armed forces.
"Only if we make breakthroughs in cooperation at a lower level
can we further conduct more cooperation in some higher-grade areas
including weapons and equipment technology and military drills in
traditional security areas," he noted.
Visiting US Pacific Fleet Commander Gary Roughead said, "The
visit of the USS Juneau is indicative of improved military
relations and transparency between the People's Liberation Army
navy and the US navy." He added that the exercise was a good
opportunity for the two armed forces to increase transparency.
China-US military ties were broken off in 2001 when a Chinese
fighter aircraft was damaged by a US surveillance plane over the
South China Sea but relations between the two have been
improving.
According to Qian the two countries have carried out a series of
exchange activities this year with higher level personnel
communications than in the past. This year has seen the most active
Sino-US military exchanges in recent years and the two sides were
"satisfied" with both the quantity and the quality of the
activities, Qian said.
The frequent joint military drills held between China and
foreign countries in recent years show China has adopted an open
approach in building its military, Peng said.
Sunday's exercise was the second phase of the first joint
Sino-American search-and-rescue exercise. The first phase, held in
September this year, consisted of communications and exercises held
in the waters off Hawaii.
(Xinhua News Agency November 20, 2006)
