US to discuss missile defence with China

A top US official plans to visit Beijing tomorrow to discuss American ambitions to build a missile-defence system that China vehemently opposes.

James Kelly, assistant US secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, was due to meet Chinese officials as part of lobbying to win Asian support for President George W Bush’s proposed National Missile Defence.

Beijing, which fears losing the deterrent power of its small nuclear arsenal, said such a system could set off a new arms race.

Other US officials have made similar lobbying visits in Europe, where American allies have questioned the plan and Russia is firmly opposed to it.

Washington said the system is aimed not at China or Russia but at smaller, unpredictable missile powers such as North Korea.

China also worries that Washington might extend protection from such a system to rival Taiwan, reducing Beijing’s ability to use its growing missile forces to intimidate the island, which it regards as a renegade province.

Chinese officials said they would react strongly to any move to include Taiwan in a regional missile defence.

The missile dispute is part of a range of issues bedevilling relations between Beijing and the Bush administration, which has been more critical of China and supportive of Taiwan.

China is holding a US Navy surveillance plane that made an emergency landing at a Chinese air base after a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter jet.

Beijing has rejected US criticism of its human rights record.

And Chinese officials were angry and embarrassed after the US State Department issued a warning about travelling to China following a string of detentions on the mainland of Chinese-born scholars and business people with foreign connections.