Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. military is rolling out the red carpet across the country this week for a top Chinese military official, culminating in a visit to the Capitol — all allegations that hackers in China were behind a major recent hacking operation, and during escalating tensions over the South China Sea.
Gen. Fan Changlong, Vice Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, is leading a high-level military delegation that was scheduled to visit military installations in California, tour the USS Ronald Reagan and “observe soldiers” at the Army’s Fort Hood in Texas, Defense Department spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters. Fan, described by the Pentagon as a “visiting guest” of U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, will meet with Carter at the Pentagon Thursday.
Friday Fan is expected to join U.S. Army Gen. Ray Odierno to sign a U.S.-China Army-to-Army Dialogue Mechanism (AADM) at the National Defense University.
The trip by Fan, who analysts say holds a position in the Chinese command structure just below President Xi Jinping roughly equivalent to the U.S. Secretary of Defense or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the “highest-level visit by a Chinese military leader” since 2012, according to a China Daily report posted on the Chinese military’s website.
During his trip, Warren said Fan will be extended “all traditional customs and courtesies to the Secretary’s guest.”
But the visit comes as the U.S. continues to investigate a massive cyber breach at the government’s Office of Personnel Management, purportedly by hackers working in China. The personal information of as many as 4 million people, potentially including top current and former cabinet secretaries, is believed to have been stolen.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said dismissed the allegations and said China would “hope the U.S. side would discard suspicions, refrain from making groundless accusations and show more trust and conduct more cooperation in this area.”
A little more than a year ago, the U.S. indicted five officers in the Chinese military – officers that, like the rest of the Chinese military, fall under Fan’s chain of command – for allegedly hacking U.S. companies to steal industry secrets.
Fan will also be meeting Carter face-to-face just two weeks after Carter publicly called out the Chinese government over its controversial “reclamation” of 2,000 acres of land in the contested South China Sea.
“The United States is deeply concerned about the pace and scope of land reclamation in the South China Sea, the prospect of militarization, as well as the potential for these activities… to increase the risk of miscalculation or conflict among claimant states,” Carter said in the keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore May 30. “With its actions in the South China Sea, China is out of step with both the international rules and norms that underscore the Asia-Pacific’s security architecture, and the regional consensus that favors diplomacy and opposes coercion.”
Mark Cozad, a Senior Defense Policy Analyst and Chinese specialist at the RAND Corporation, told ABC News that while U.S. and China’s top military officials certainly have much to talk about behind closed doors this week, it’s doubtful there will be any fruitful outcome on either the hacking allegations — which China routinely flatly denies — or the South China Sea controversy.
“I think it [the visit] is just about keeping the lines of communication open,” Cozad said. “The visit says something about the willingness, on the Chinese side, to be involved in these discussions.”
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