By Yang Chengjun (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-27 07:25

The government recently announced that it will release information about the country's military budget each year, including how the funds are used. It will also release information about seven conventional weapons. The move reflects China's sincere desire to make its military more transparent and also indicates that the effort to do so is picking up speed.

Against a background of an increasingly multi-polar world and competing strategic interests, mutual trust between countries, particularly between their military forces, is of vital importance to world peace and stability.

For the Chinese military in particular, transparency will help foster an image of trustworthiness before the international community. Transparency is also a kind of "smiling warning" to those who play at power politics, this author believes.

In addition, military exchanges can serve to promote strategic mutual trust between countries and clear up misgivings. By promoting transparency, each side will gain a better understanding of the other's strategic intentions. Insofar as countries clearly demonstrate their positions, they will clear up any misunderstandings that could trigger potential conflicts, thereby strengthening the national security of every country.

Also, by getting involved in mainstream international military exchanges, China will be able to close the gap between its military and those of other countries.

More extensive and intensive exchanges with foreign armies will expose China's military forces to other types of military expertise, ideas and technologies.

This transparency will mainly involve military strategy, nuclear strategy, military expenses and the armed forces' organization and size.

The nuclear strategies of the United States, Russia, Britain, France and India, for example, are transparent.

So, China's conventional and nuclear strategies, together with its research processes, should be made more open and transparent.

Seclusion and excessive secrecy are but an expression of a lack of self-confidence.

In today's world, a number of factors are impeding military exchanges and mutual trust.

First, some Western military powers peep into other countries' military affairs at point-blank range. At the same time, they have built up an intelligence gathering system that incorporates terrestrial, marine, sky, space, electronic and Web means. This kind of all-around and all-weather intelligence collection makes it impossible for many countries to keep strategic secrets.

Second, some developing countries have no confidence in themselves in the face of Western powers' aggressive intelligence-gathering activities. These developing countries, which are caught in a one-way military transparency impasse, have no choice but to slam the door on military exchanges. In protecting their military secrets, they also block a channel of military exchanges.

Third, fossilized ideas and notions make it difficult to distinguish between normal military exchanges and military secrets. This necessarily poses a stumbling block to normal international exchanges.

It is natural for a country to define what is an appropriate amount of transparency. For example, line-by-line explanations of how military budgets are spent and the functions of strategic weapons, their numbers and deployment are all military secrets and should never be leaked. In addition, the research and development of new weapons and their tests should be subject to secrecy.

Reinforcing international academic exchanges on military affairs is an effective way to help boost military transparency.

Such exchanges are intended to cover the analysis of international military strategic situations, research on military subjects of common interest and probes into joint operations staged by different military services.

Mutual visits between high-level military leaders are another way to promote military transparency. Therefore, it is necessary to set up a mechanism to allow for regular visits involving defense ministry leaders, chiefs of general staffs and commanders of armies, air forces, navies and marines. The visits should not be confined to ceremonies and pomp, but should get into substantial matters.

Steadily and smoothly operating hotlines should be set up between top leaders. Since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when military hotlines were first introduced, they have worked effectively to defuse many major crises around the world.

China should learn from the experience of the international community by opening hotlines with the world's major developed nations and the countries in its near abroad in order to permit timely information sharing and the avoidance of potential armed conflicts.

Joint military exercises also serve to promote military transparency in that they will increase mutual understanding between the Chinese armed forces and their foreign counterparts and, in turn, mutual trust.

There should also be more cooperation involving military technology, such as the importation, transfer, exchange and joint development of advanced weapons.

Through such types of cooperation, the Chinese armed forces' weaponry has been upgraded over the last decade or so.

The author is a researcher with the Second Artillery Force of the People's Liberation Army

(China Daily 09/27/2007 page10)