By The Huffington Post News Editors

By Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) – China‘s People’s Liberation Army has accepted an invitation to participate for the first time in a major U.S.-hosted naval drill, but legal restrictions will limit its role to less sensitive exercises, like disaster relief, U.S. officials say.
Beijing‘s agreement to join the drills being held next year comes at a moment of heightened tensions between China and U.S. ally Japan over disputed East China Sea islets, and unease in the United States about China‘s rapid military buildup and its cyber capabilities.
The Rim of the Pacific exercise, known as RIMPAC, is billed as the world’s largest international maritime exercise, with 22 nations and more than 40 ships and submarines participating the last time it was held off Hawaii in 2012.
Not all the participants are treaty allies with the United States. Last year’s participants included Russia and India.
But China has never participated in the event, although it did send observers to RIMPAC in 1998, the Pentagon said.
Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter acknowledged China had agreed to participate in RIMPAC during a little-noticed speech on Wednesday in Jakarta. Carter said he was “delighted that they have accepted” the American invitation, extended last year by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
At the time, Panetta said he asked China to send a ship to the exercises. Beijing said later it would give the offer “positive consideration.”
“We seek to strengthen and grow our military-to-military relationship with China, which matches and follows our growing political and economic relationship,” Carter said, according to prepared remarks on the Defense Department‘s website.
U.S. law prohibits the Pentagon from any military contacts with the PLA if it could “create a national security risk due to an inappropriate exposure” to activities including joint combat operations.
There is an exemption for operations or exercises related to search and rescue and humanitarian relief, and China participated with the United States last year in a …read more
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