Associated Press

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping at the White House on Feb. 14, 2012.

BEIJING – Days into Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States, the Chinese press assessment was startlingly similar to American coverage: long on diplomatic niceties, short on any serious policy.

In other words, a great success for the apparent heir to the Chinese presidency.

On last night’s CCTV’s Evening News, which an estimated 135 million Chinese watch each night, Xi was showed being dutifully feted by Washington’s political elite with all the pomp expected for America’s most important trading partner. Full military honor guards, lunch with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and, of course, a sit-down with President Barack Obama were all highlights in the official coverage.

Similarly, Thursday’s People’s Daily and the English-language China Daily led with Xi’s meetings in Washington and his Valentine’s Day-appropriate message that the two countries don’t need to love each other, but nevertheless still need to learn to trust each other and work better together.

Writing about Xi’s comments at a welcome lunch hosted by Biden and Clinton, the People’s Daily earnestly noted the key to working out differences over issues like trade, foreign policy and human rights is that they be “handled based on principles of mutual respect, candid communication and mutual non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs.”

Associated Press

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping reviews troops outside the Pentagon during a full honors ceremony in his honor on Tuesday.

The Beijing News also noted that Xi had expressed to Biden that, “China hopes the U.S. will see China with an objective view and take real action to enhance mutual trust.”

Both comments are excellent examples of the rhetoric typical of Chinese state media coverage of these high-level visits. In some ways, they represent a status quo: an olive branch that is extended in advance of and during high-level visits to reflect the ruling Communist Party’s desire to focus on areas of agreement rather than disagreement.

That these talking points continue to show up daily in local coverage here of Xi’s visit suggest that he has managed to accomplish his primary goals: reaffirming the importance of the Sino-U.S. relationship to the Chinese without rocking the boat.

To be sure, there are issues of disagreement more plainly articulated in the press here but currently only on the periphery of the generally positive coverage of Xi’s visit.

For example, the reliably nationalist newspaper, Global Times, in one article emphasized the positive steps that have come from Xi’s trip. But in a separate story on the Syria question – an issue that China has taken a hard stance on – noted that, “the West’s interference has been an important external factor that affects the developing direction of Arab political crises.”

The article concluded by charging, “Foreign interference has played an important role for the Syrian situation evolving into a civil war.”

In yesterday’s People’s Daily, an article entitled “China-U.S. trade to be more balanced,” noted that “only cooperation, rather than pressuring each other can effectively solve the current problems we are facing.”

How Xi will reconcile those comments with his Thursday visit to California – a state that exports $14 billion dollar worth of products to China, but imports a whopping $120 billion – remains to be seen.

However, if you see in the Chinese press tomorrow that such issues will be handled with “mutual respect and mutual non-interference,” you’ll know that Vice-President Xi has passed the test to become President Xi.

BEIJING – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ three-day visit to Beijing this week was intended to help jump start military-to-military relations with China, which have been rocky in recent years due to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and the periodic arrival of carrier groups near the mainland.

Larry Downing / AP

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates talks while visiting the Great Wall in Mutianyu, China Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011.

Gates instead found himself fielding a barrage of questions about recent Chinese military innovations and calls from home to meet those developments with more focused U.S. military spending.

The startling photos of China’s new J-20 stealth fighter – anticipated by many experts not to be operational for several more years – as well as admissions this week by intelligence chiefs that they had underestimated new anti-ship ballistic missiles, have been feeding the discussion.

To his credit, despite negative press in the U.S. over the PLA’s provocative J-20 display on the eve of the visit, as well as disturbing news that President Hu Jintao appeared unaware of the new stealth plane’s debut, Gates stuck to his stated goal.

The announcement Wednesday that Gen. Jing Zhiyuan, commander of China’s nuclear forces, will visit the United States Strategic Command in Nebraska was a notable score for the U.S., according to many China watchers. It represents a fresh opportunity to establish some rapport and an opportunity to push for transparency from a military force the U.S. knows precious little about.

“China’s Naval Ambitions” is an instructive article from the Armed Forces Journal on this point. Written by two former U.S. military attaches posted to Beijing, Navy Cmdr. Thomas Henderschedt and Marine Lt. Col. Chad Sbragia, the piece critically calls attention to what they view as an institutional failure within the U.S. armed forces to understand the People’s Liberation Army.

In pointing out the deficiencies of the United States’ intelligence gathering mechanisms on China, Henderschedt and Sbragia emphasized the importance of military-to-military visits as a means to balance out a relationship where the PLA has a far better understanding of the motivations, tactics and thinking of the U.S. military than America does of China:

Conversely, while many U.S. maritime services personnel are dedicated to China, few currently on the “China account” have visited China, fewer still speak Chinese and nearly none have enjoyed direct, day-to-day experience with the PLAN [People’s Liberation Army Navy] and PLAN strategic initiatives... The deep understanding by the PLAN allows its officers to be extremely predictive on how the U.S. will act, react and negotiate. The inverse is also true — our superficial approach does not allow deep, predictive analysis of PLAN strategic initiatives.

As China has rapidly modernized its armed forces in the last two decades, Chinese military officers have been sent off to learn English and military strategy and over time have acquired a surprisingly intimate knowledge of U.S. tactics and policy.

On the other hand, as the authors note, few Americans officers are well-versed in China’s military capabilities, strategy or political thinking.

Though the article is strictly on the U.S. naval relationship, it is not much of a stretch to suggest that this inverse relationship probably applies across the board to all branches of the American military.

Kyodo/Reuters

Experts were surprised by the sudden debut of China's J-20 stealth fighter, which many believed would not be in operation for a few more years at least.

This makes Gates’ successful trip a huge step towards gaining a better understanding of the PLA’s leadership and its intentions, which is a growing concern not just for the United States, but China’s Asian neighbors as well.

The intentions and motivations of the PLA’s leadership is a critical unknown, as the authors note, despite steady American calls for cooperation in the South China Sea and the Pacific, China still acts, with its own best interests at heart:

It is imperative to understand, however, that China, and by extension the PLAN, will behave in its own interest, even as the U.S. seeks cooperation and avenues for PLAN transparency. While we continue to pursue “dual wins” with the Chinese, it is very instructive to note that the Chinese language has no native means of conveying this concept.

Henderschedt’s point that the Chinese for the term, “dual wins,” or shuang ying, is not native to Chinese is a good point. It is rare that you hear that term used outside of the standard party propaganda and even rarer to hear examples of it in reference to the recent military relationship.