It was a critical, if tentative, opening to one of the world’s most secret armies. ““What we’re trying to do is engage them in a dialogue,’’ says a senior Pentagon official. A lot rides on the uneasy relationship between Washington and Beijing – from the fate of Asian security to the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. China, with 1.2 billion people and a $23 billion trade surplus with America, can help or harm significantly. And the PLA, already a major player in the highest circles of Beijing’s policymaking, may take an even greater role once Deng Xiaoping, China’s ailing patriarch, dies – as peacekeeper and, quite possibly, as kingmaker. ““Cutting off communications with the military was a mistake,’’ says Michael Swaine, codirector of the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy at the Rand Corp. ““We need to maintain access to give us the opportunity to influence their outlook in the post-Deng period.''

Many China watchers would argue there’s a better chance of Beijing’s granting independence to Tibet. ““These are the people who still refer to the Korean War as the war to resist American aggression,’’ says William Triplett, former chief Republican counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ““What should the policy be? You deal with them with tongs.’’ Gerald Segal, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, believes in contacts but warns, ““China is now the only country in the world that targets the United States with nuclear weapons.’’ Such wariness casts some doubt on the new Joint U.S.-China Defense Conversion Commission, charged with turning munitions into civilian products, which met for the first time last week. The Xian Aircraft Industrial Group, for example, makes tail sections for Boeing 737s, Ferris wheels – even portable toilets. But that hasn’t stopped it from expanding production of long-range bombers like the Hong-6.

Once a peasant army nurtured on rice gruel and Maoist slogans, the PLA is a piebald giant of 3 million men, lumbering into the 21st century. The military has fundamentally changed its doctrine, says Swaine, from a Maoist ““defense against a land war with the Soviet Union to the prosecution of local wars and an active peripheral defense.’’ Watching the gulf war, China saw the need for high technology, rapid reaction forces and a more centralized command and control. But challenging that professionalism, a new class of entrepreneurs has grown up in the PLA, which controls some 20,000 companies that claim virtual monopoly power in vast sectors of China’s surging economy, particularly in mining, aerospace and real-estate development. Corruption – kickbacks, drug and arms smuggling, bribery – is pandemic.

Money stokes an ever-expanding PLA. Leaders claim their annual budget will run about $7 billion this year. But David Shambaugh, senior lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, calculates the PLA’s 1993 off-budget income at $38 billion. Others argue that low prices and cheap labor boost the military’s purchasing power to more than $75 billion, perhaps just behind the United States and Russia. To replace its antiquated equipment, China has bought attack helicopters, transport planes and Su-27 fighters from Russia, and is reportedly negotiating for more advanced MiGs. The navy has haggled with Ukraine for a nearly complete aircraft carrier; the army has padded its payroll with hundreds of Russian technicians, many proficient in aerospace and missile design. All of which terrifies China’s neighbors – and frustrates the U.S. goal of a regional security treaty.

Perry went to Beijing to nudge the PLA into lifting the veil on its military and geopolitical intentions. He also began exploring a new approach to nonproliferation, including the spread of missile technology, an option one Pentagon official calls ““hate the sin, love the sinner.’’ Put simply, the strategy calls for improving relations with nations that have weapons of mass destruction and offering them inducements to open their programs to scrutiny and, ultimately, to negotiated international control – along the lines of the agreement with North Korea. What kinds of incentives? Not arms, but technical aid, say, to improve the safety of nuclear weapons. The plan is a long shot – but it beats a cold war in the Pacific.

TOTAL ARMED FORCES… Active 2,930,000 Reserves 1,200,000 Army…………….. Troops 2,200,000 Tanks 10,000 Heavy artillery 18,300 Navy…………….. Troops 260,000 Submarines 50 Warships 55 Patrol boats 870 Air force………… Troops 470,000 Bombers 470 Fighters 4,500 Support aircraft 1,040 NUCLEAR MISSILES…… ICBMs 14 IRBMs 60 PEOPLE’S ARMED POLICE.. Men 1,200,000 Source: IISS