What China Is Learing From the U.S. Military

As Typhoon Haiy­an slammed in­to the Phil­ip­pines on Nov. 2, about 60 sol­diers from the Chinese mil­it­ary were in Hawaii tak­ing part in a joint mil­it­ary ex­er­cise with the United States and sev­er­al oth­er na­tions to bet­ter co­ordin­ate re­lief ef­forts in the event of a typhoon in the re­gion.

The mil­it­ary ex­er­cise was timely, if not iron­ic, but it also un­der­scores China’s grow­ing will­ing­ness to work with its neigh­bors, even if they’re not al­lies.

After first of­fer­ing just $100,000 in aid, China has now pledged $1.4 mil­lion after a re­cent ed­it­or­i­al in China’s Glob­al Times cri­ti­cized the gov­ern­ment for not do­ing more for the Phil­ip­pines, which lies right across the con­tested South China Sea. “China, as a re­spons­ible power, should par­ti­cip­ate in re­lief op­er­a­tions to as­sist a dis­aster-stricken neigh­bor­ing coun­try, no mat­ter wheth­er it’s friendly or not. China’s in­ter­na­tion­al im­age is of vi­tal im­port­ance to its in­terests. If it snubs Ma­nila this time, China will suf­fer great losses,” the ed­it­or­i­al said.

China is learn­ing what U.S. mil­it­ary lead­ers have known for some time, which is that dis­aster re­lief and hu­man­it­ari­an aid are among of the most ef­fect­ive tools in the na­tion­al se­cur­ity tool­box. It’s also cent­ral to the Pentagon’s post-war re­bal­ance to the Asia-Pa­cific.

“The key pil­lars of our de­fense stra­tegic guid­ance is to — not just in the Asia Pa­cific re­gion, but else­where — build part­ner ca­pa­city. One of the linch­pins of that guid­ance is to con­tin­ue to in­vest in our al­lies and part­ner­ships, par­tic­u­larly in the Asia Pa­cific re­gion, where we have had bases open and closed over the years,” said Pentagon Press Sec­ret­ary George Little last week. “The goal is not to have new per­man­ent bases for the U.S. mil­it­ary, but it’s to en­able ro­ta­tion­al pres­ences so that we can work to­geth­er with al­lies and part­ners in the re­gion to ad­dress prob­lems like hu­man­it­ari­an as­sist­ance and dis­aster re­lief.”

Dur­ing a speech this week­end in Cali­for­nia, De­fense Sec­ret­ary Chuck Hagel said dis­aster re­lief helps build these part­ner­ships — but it also provides price­less PR for the U.S. mil­it­ary. “When Amer­ica re­sponds to these kinds of hu­man tra­gedies the way we are, the world sees the best of who we are,” he said.

The joint ex­er­cise in Hawaii wasn’t the first the Chinese par­ti­cip­ated in, but it was the first co­ordin­ated field ex­er­cise and is part of China’s grow­ing par­ti­cip­a­tion in mari­time ex­er­cises in the re­gion, in­clud­ing anti-pir­acy op­er­a­tions. It’s ex­actly the kind of open­ness seni­or U.S. lead­ers have hoped for from the People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army. As the U.S. looks for ways to con­nect with the PLA, some plan­ners have sug­ges­ted the Pentagon — the Army in par­tic­u­lar — should do whatever it can to get China to par­ti­cip­ate in hu­man­it­ari­an ex­er­cises like dis­aster re­lief op­er­a­tions and ci­vil­ian evac­u­ations. The think­ing goes that those types of op­er­a­tions are far more likely to oc­cur in the years to come than any Amer­ic­an land in­va­sion of the Chinese main­land, and there­fore that’s what the U.S. Army should be train­ing to do.

“What the Amer­ic­an and Chinese mil­it­ar­ies have tried to do, and we’ve been mak­ing more head­way over this over the last year or two is to define do­mains in which both coun­tries see an op­por­tun­ity to co­oper­ate without in­fringing on either coun­try’s per­cep­tions of their sov­er­eignty,” said Jonath­an Pol­lack, dir­ect­or of the John L. Thornton China Cen­ter at Brook­ings In­sti­tute.

The United States re­spon­ded sig­ni­fic­antly after the 2004 tsunami, and even offered aid to Burma, which re­fused to let U.S. Navy ships dock there to de­liv­er medi­cine and sup­plies. “We re­cog­nize ob­vi­ously that it’s a huge be­ne­fit [to] per­cep­tions of the United States, so you could say we’re do­ing well by do­ing good, in some sense,” Pol­lack said.

As China steps up its aid to the Phil­ip­pines, it seems its gov­ern­ment is mind­ful of per­cep­tions as well.