Clear communication needed

US President Barack Obama's state visit to China, which started yesterday, will play a positive role in propelling forward the comprehensive development of bilateral ties.

Sino-US relations have generally remained stable over the past years with fruitful cooperation on a range of issues. However, bilateral ties have been uneven, with substantial progress achieved in the political and economic domain while much remains to be done on the security and military fronts.

For any two countries, military ties serve as the most sensitive weathervane on the state of relations. Over the past three decades since diplomatic relations were established in 1979, military ties between China and the United States have been particularly fragile, with "on-again, off-again" contact and exchanges, apart from the Cold War period during which they were driven closer by the common military threat from the erstwhile Soviet Union. The Taiwan question has posed challenges although they have managed to avoid a direct military confrontation.