President Hu Jintao told Rumsfeld that although the military relationship had improved over the years there was still room to expand, senior US defense officials told reporters.

"All this will better help military forces of our two countries to better enhance mutual understanding and friendship," Hu said said in the meeting in the Great Hall of the People.

Rumsfeld earlier made an unprecedented visit to the headquarters of the Strategic Rocket Forces whose commander, General Jing Zhiyuan, assured him of China's policy of "no first use" of nuclear weapons, the officials said.

The officials interpreted the comments as a disavowal of a statement in June by General Zhu Chenghu who said that if US forces targeted China in a crisis over Taiwan, "I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons."

Jing told Rumsfeld suggestions that China was targeting other nations were "completely groundless," a senior US official who attended the meeting said.

"As commander of the strategic forces reporting to the Central Military Command I'm in a position to clarify this," the official quoted Jing as saying.

The US officials regarded the visit to the Strategic Rocket Forces headquarters as something of a coup, saying the Chinese for years had denied requests to visit.

Rumsfeld was told he was the first foreigner to set foot in the building, they said. He was briefed on the organizational structure of the command by Jing's senior staff.

"I think it's a start," another senior US defense official said. "There were some interesting things we may want to pursue."

"We certainly took it as a willingness to engage, albeit gingerly," he said.

Earlier, Rumsfeld and Defense Minister Cao Guangchuan agreed "in principal" on the need for more educational exchanges and other types of military-to-military activities.

Rumsfeld said the contacts were needed "to demystify what we see of them and what they see of us."

In his talks with Cao and in an earlier seminar at a school that grooms future Communist Party leaders, Rumsfeld warned that China's rapid and secretive military buildup had raised questions about its intentions.

Cao denied China had understated its military spending and insisted that raising the living standards of the country's poor made it "impossible to massively increase" military spending.

He said Chinese military spending this year totalled about 30 billion dollars, although he acknowledged that the space program and other equipment spending was outside the defense budget.

"That is the true budget we have today," he said.

The Pentagon in July estimated the true size of Chinese defense spending at 90 billion dollars a year, with much of it going to sophisticated weaponry that will enable China to project power in the Asia-Pacific region.

Rumsfeld said Washington wanted a constructive relationship with Beijing, but was uncertain whether China "will make the right choices -- choices that will serve the world's real interests in regional peace and security."

"Many countries, for example, have questions about the pace and the scope of China's military expansion," he told faculty and students at the elite Central Party School.

"A growth in China's power projection understandably leads other nations to question China's intentions, and to adjust their behavior in some fashion," he said.

"The rapid, and -- from our perspective at least -- non-transparent nature of this buildup contributes to their uncertainty."

In a question and answer session following his speech, Rumsfeld rejected claims that there were different voices in Washington on how to deal with China. Instead, he said the different voices were coming from China.

"We see mixed signals and we are seeking clarification," he said. The visit, Rumsfeld's first to China as defense secretary, is likely to set the tone for President George W. Bush's visit here next month.

It comes nearly five years after a collision between a US Navy surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter blew up into an major crisis between the two powers.

A Pentagon report in July said the military buildup was tipping the balance against Taiwan and threatened the broader military balance in the region.

Defense officials said Taiwan was mentioned only briefly in the talks. But the island is the most immediate potential source of conflict.

Beijing, which claims it as a renegade provinces, asserts the right to retake it by force, and the United States has pledged to aid Taiwan's defense.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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