BEIJING, Jan 11 (Reuters) - China and the United States remain divided by military distrust despite U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates's bridge-building visit, state media said on Tuesday, while Chinese websites lauded what they said was the first flight of an advanced fighter.
The Obama administration has made deeper contacts with China's modernizing military one of the gains it hopes to win from President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington next week, after a rocky 2010 when China suspended such contacts to protest U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled island claimed by Beijing.
Gates was due to meet Hu in Beijing later in the day. That meeting showed "the high importance the Chinese side places on the China-U.S. relationship and on the military-to-military relations," Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told Gates.
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