The navies of China and the United States held a
search-and-rescue exercise on the South China Sea on Sunday
morning.
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 conducted communications, fleet formation changes
and search-and-rescue exercises.
The basic idea behind the exercise was for the Chinese and US
navies to jointly locate a ship in danger and salvage it. The two
sides commanded different stages of the whole exercise.
The Chinese side took charge of the communications and searching
stage, while the US side commanded vessels of the two countries to
conduct the rescue.
The communications drills had been conducted at Saturday night
in the waters east to the Zhanjiang Port.
The formation drill started on 7:30 AM and China's "Zhanjiang"
and the USS Juneau completed four formation changes in about one
hour.
On 9:25 AM, the joint rescue excises began. The USS Juneau
passed the order to the USS missile destroyer Fitzgerald to search
for "Dongting Lake", the Chinese ship "in danger", after receiving
Zhanjiang's signal for help.
The Yun-7 and P-3C were asked to help with the location
mission.
On 10:25 AM, the location of the ship "in danger" was confirmed
and, about half an hour later, "the fire" on the ship was
extinguished, the "damaged" ship body was fixed and the "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 search-and-rescue exercises with countries
including Britain, France, Pakistan, India, Australia and Thailand.
Sunday's exercise was the first ever held between China and the
United States.
In the past, exchanges between the Chinese and US armed forces
have mainly focused on exchanges of 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,
we can 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 Jeneau is indicative of improved military
relations and transparency between the People's Liberation Army
navy and the US navy."
He added that the exercise would be 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 forces have been
improving.
According to Qian, the two countries have carried out a series
of exchange activities this year, with higher level personnel
communications compared with the past.
This year has seen the most active Sino-US military exchanges in
recent years, and the two sides are "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 passing exercises held in waters off Hawaii.
(Xinhua News Agency November 20, 2006)
