Mullen visits China as Navy

It the best American military officers going to China this weekend as well as a multinational fleet completes the exposition in neighboring Brunei to drill in the hotly contested South China Sea.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left on Friday and is expected to arrive in China on Sunday to begin four days of meetings with Chinese military officials and visit military units in Beijing and along the east coast.
His visit is part of an effort to ease the frosty relations with Beijing after a series of setbacks in recent years, including U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the frequent cyber attacks emanating from China and concerned about the growing military capabilities in the country.
But Mullen's visit will coincide with what Pentagon officials called a low-level communication routine drill about six miles off the coast of Brunei in the southern outskirts of the vast South China Sea.
China regards the whole of the South China Sea and the island group in it, both its own and treats international law entitles him to the police of a foreign naval activity there. U.S. insists that its fleet has the right to transit the area and collect data and observations support the multilateral negotiations to resolve differences.
On Friday, Mullen, Capt. John Kirby, a representative called the drill "freedom of navigation exercises in international waters," and said that "poses no threat to any country in the region and should not be taken that way."
Naval exposure, known as BRIDEX2011, what's happening in Brunei and wraps up Saturday with a fleet review and what is called a "passage exercise." During this drill, practice ships communicate with each other as they pass, and in some cases they will do a brief exchange of personnel or aircraft. USS Preble, USS Navy, is scheduled to participate in the drill.
China takes part in Brunei exposure, along with several other countries, including India, Thailand, Indonesia, New Zealand, Japan and Australia.
Activity in the South China Sea, politically volatile issue, with China, Vietnam and the Philippines, trading barbs over their overlapping territorial claims.
This provoked a tense exchange last month, as China has annoyed the U.S. Senate resolution criticizing Beijing's use of force in recent incidents between the Chinese courts and other countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that the U.S. decision "does not hold" and said the dispute should be resolved only by the countries directly involved.
Last year, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drew the wrath of China when she told a regional conference that the U.S. "national interest" is the territorial disputes in the South China Sea are resolved by "sharing the diplomatic process on all applicants."
Military relations with China, however, were frozen when the arms sales to Taiwan was announced. Taiwan is a self-governing island that China considers its own territory and that the U.S. is committed to arming.
Thaw began when U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled to Beijing in January, and then a productive visit to Washington shortly after President Hu Jintao.
In May, the Chinese delegation headed by General Chen Bingde, a colleague of Mullen, was in Washington for meetings, and then visited several military facilities including Navy and Air Force bases. During this visit - the first of its kind in the past seven years - Chen asked Mullen for a similar tour of China.