Beijing-Washington Dialogue Matures as Top Chinese General Visits US

The visit to the United States by Fan Changlong, vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission, despite the rift over the South China Sea and cyber issues, demonstrates budding military relationship between the two countries.

Despite the rift over the South China Sea, the vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission, Fan Changlong, visited the United States.

"General Fan's continuation of his visit despite the recent cyber allegations and P-8 overflights of the South China Sea suggest a maturing and routinization of military dialogue," Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Xinhua in an interview.

Paal was talking about the US dispatching of P-8 reconnaissance planes to fly over the islands and reefs in the South China Sea and the recent US accusations about China's hacking of US federal personnel office's computer networks, raising the tensions in China-US ties.

The vice chairman, Fan Changlong, held talks at the Pentagon with US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, during which they discussed military-to-military relations, Taiwan, Japan and maritime issues, including the South China Sea dispute.

The two leaders restated their commitment to building a continued and substantive military-to-military relationship based on mutual trust, cooperation, non-conflict and sustainability.

Michael O'hanlon, director of research on foreign policy at the Brookings Institution said that it's good to have channels of communication. “Sometimes the best you can hope for is that you limit the fallout from disagreements," media reported.

The high-level Chinese military delegation headed by Fan, which started its US trip on Monday, has already visited such places as a Boeing factory in Seattle, the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, and the US Army base at Fort Hood, Texas.