The U.S. military has invited China to participate in the next Rim of the Pacific naval exercise off Hawaii in two years after equivocating on the issue during the multinational war games this summer.
At a news conference in Beijing today, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told his Chinese counterpart, Defense Minister Gen. Liang Guanglie, that "the United States Navy will invite China to send a ship to participate in the RIMPAC 2014 exercise," the Pentagon said.
Panetta and Liang said they see progress and room for growth in the two nations’ military relationship, the Pentagon said.
Twenty-two nations, 25,000 personnel, 40 ships, six submarines and more than 200 aircraft participated this summer in RIMPAC, held June 29 through Aug. 3 in and around Hawaii.
So many nations were involved in this year’s RIMPAC that China complained it was feeling left out.
"Watching from afar, China is feeling uncomfortable," the Global Times, published under the auspices of the Communist Party of China, wrote at the time. "But it should be forgotten soon. The exercise is nothing but a big party held by the U.S., which is in a melancholy state of mind due to difficult realities."
A small Chinese contingent did observe RIMPAC in 1998, the Navy said. But certain direct military-to-military contact with China is prohibited under the National Defense Authorization Act of 2000.
In 2006 a waiver of the restrictions allowed a Chinese team to observe a portion of the Valiant Shield exercises off Guam.
U.S. Navy Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert was asked in June during a news briefing at the Pentagon when the Chinese might be involved in RIMPAC.
"You know, you can be sure that would be an endeavor, and I hope sometime in the future we can," Greenert said, adding, "The more the better in an exercise such as RIMPAC."
Adm. Cecil Haney, head of U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, avoided answering why China, a rising Pacific power, was not invited to observe or participate to some degree in RIMPAC during a news conference at the start of the exercise.
"As we go forward, we encourage more (military-to-military) relationships" with China, Haney said at the time. "Clearly, we’ve been working on a strategic level, and we desire more operational and tactical-level things to do in the ‘mil-to-mil’ category."
Haney added, "As we look at moving forward with China, we look forward to them joining us in the humanitarian, civic-action category of work because we look for China to join us as a responsible nation responding to humanitarian-assistance, disaster-relief kinds of things."
The last time the U.S. Navy and China worked together ship-to-ship was during a counterpiracy exercise last week in the Gulf of Aden.
