U.S. General Begins Peking Talks : Vessey Visit May Bring American Navy Port Calls in China

Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began a series of talks here Saturday with Chinese military officials that are expected to help iron out plans for the first visit by U.S. Navy ships to Chinese ports in 35 years.

Vessey, accompanied by several other high-ranking U.S. military officials, arrived Saturday morning. After a brief welcoming ceremony, he met with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Dezhi, chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, who once directed Chinese troops fighting the United States during the Korean War.

Vessey is the highest-ranking U.S. career military officer to visit China since the Communist Party came to power in 1949. His trip is the latest in a series of exchanges over the past 18 months between Chinese and American defense officials.

During previous visits, Chinese and U.S. officials have agreed in principle that U.S. Navy ships will be permitted to make some port calls along the Chinese coast. Adm. William Crowe, commander in chief of Pacific forces, is with Vessey here, and U.S. officials acknowledged Saturday that the two Americans will probably discuss the proposed port calls during their weeklong visit to China.

U.S. officials have said that if such calls are arranged, Navy ships will probably put in at Qingdao, on the north China coast, or in Shanghai. Vessey and his delegation are scheduled to tour Chinese naval facilities and shipyards in Shanghai this week.

A U.S. spokesman here said Saturday that he could not comment on a report published in Washington that the United States has agreed to help modernize the Chinese navy by selling sonar gear, gas-turbine engines and shipboard air-defense equipment to China.

“I think they will discuss several things concerning modernization (of the Chinese navy),” the spokesman said.

During the past year, U.S. and Chinese officials have expressed concern about Soviet use of the naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam. And in the wake of the visit here by Soviet First Deputy Premier Ivan V. Arkhipov last month, U.S. officials are working to ensure that Vessey’s does not go unnoticed. Although Vessey has scheduled no press conferences and his meetings with Chinese military officials are private, news photographers are being allowed to take pictures of the military delegation twice each day.

At a banquet Saturday night, Yang, who is in charge of the world’s biggest army, referred obliquely to the sensitive question of continued U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

“There are still difficulties and obstacles in the way of developing the relations between our two countries,” he said. “This should be treated seriously.”