Reporters plied with beer as Panetta gets rare tour of China naval base

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta reviews a naval honor guard at Qingdao, China before touring Chinese naval vessels of the North Sea Fleet, Sept. 20, 2012. / AP

(AP) QINGDAO, China — U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta got a rare glimpse Thursday inside a Chinese naval base and toured two of its ships.

But most details of his visit — like much of the information about China's military — were off limits to the media traveling with him.

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Instead, the reporters got beer. Chinese officials refused to let reporters stay with Panetta as he went aboard the ships, so the media were taken to the nearby Tsingtao Brewery for a tour.

Meanwhile, Panetta checked out the frigate Yantai, which recently returned from a counter-piracy deployment in the Gulf of Aden, and the Great Wall 197, a conventionally powered submarine.

The U.S. has repeatedly called for China to be more transparent about its military. Panetta's tour of the People's Liberation Army's North Sea Fleet capped a three-day visit in which the Pentagon chief met with China's military and civilian leaders, urging greater cooperation and communication between the two nations.

The next stop for Panetta is New Zealand, where he will meet with the Pacific nation's defense minister.

[jefforsythe]

Corporate greed, how soon people forget the fact that Americans, not that long ago, were fighting and dying in places like Korea and Vietnam to stop the spread and influence of the brutal Chinese Communist Party. Corporate greed, turning its back on the fact that the Chinese Communist Party has murdered eighty million of its own people, and offers its people no human rights whatsoever, and I mean, whatsoever.
Corporate greed, knowing that the Chinese Communist Party has hundreds of slave camps hidden all over Mainland China, pumping out poisonous and badly made products for the naive Western public to line up for.
Corporate greed, funny, has backfired and America is bankrupt and Red China is laughing all the way to the bank.
Just my understanding, thank you.

[IPonUall2]

I have always known China couldn't produce quality goods for America all along, the farms are poisoned or infested, disease has always come from china's ignorant farmers, and the corporates don't care at all.
The America I knew was betrayed as far back as Nixon, and as recently as our congress.