BEIJING - Limited military talks between China and the United States - an arena in which the two sides view each other with mounting unease - open here on Wednesday as a prelude to a wider-ranging economic and strategic dialogue between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and their Chinese counterparts.
China is increasingly suspicious of what it views as stepped-up spying by American planes and ships along its coast, and the United States is disquieted by China's growing array of weaponry, analysts on both sides say.
The two nations have been unable to agree on a serious agenda for military talks despite an escalation of tensions as China presses territorial claims in the East and South China Seas and the United States fortifies longstanding alliances from Australia to the Philippines.
The meetings, known as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, will be limited to a one-day session on Wednesday that will cover two subjects, cyberwarfare and maritime issues, Obama administration officials said.
The broader high-level talks scheduled to start on Thursday with Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Geithner are likely to be strained in public and dominated behind the scenes by the escape of the blind human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng, apparently into American protection in Beijing. But both sides have plowed ahead with the diplomatic agenda since Mr. Chen's dramatic journey to Beijing from his house arrest in the countryside.
The Obama administration has remained virtually silent on Mr. Chen, refusing to confirm that he is in American hands and moving the choreography forward for what the Chinese consider "all weather" talks involving hundreds of diplomats and officials at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse complex, dotted with lakes and willow trees.
Washington's regard for the Chinese government's sensitivity may have helped the Beijing leadership remain outwardly calm about the Chen case, which comes at a time of political upheaval in the aftermath of the dismissal of Bo Xilai, a member of the Politburo.
Even before the Chen case erupted, there were few expectations of specific outcomes for the economic and strategic talks, in which every item on the agenda, from North Korea to the global economy, has been painstakingly negotiated.
Mrs. Clinton said in Washington before her departure on Monday that she would raise human rights during her visit.
Until Mr. Chen's case complicated the atmosphere, human rights were expected to play little part. Human rights talks between the nations are accorded a separate dialogue at a different time of year.
Still, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, Michael H. Posner, who has pressed Mr. Chen's case, is a member of Mrs. Clinton's delegation. He had been scheduled to accompany her before Mr. Chen's escape.
In the military talks, Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns and the acting under secretary of defense for policy, James N. Miller, will lead the American delegation, and Gen. Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, is the head of the Chinese delegation.
With the discussion generally limited to cyberwarfare and maritime issues, the talks will not include space weaponry or missile defense, two areas in which the Chinese are concentrating military expenditure, Obama administration officials said.
In a recent report on the American military relationship with China, Shirley A. Kan, a specialist in Asian security at the Congressional Research Service, wrote that China's "reduced appreciation for military-to-military exchanges has accompanied its rising assertiveness." In an example of the rocky relationship, she noted that when Adm. Mike Mullen, the recently retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited China last year, he was the first chairman to do so since 2007.
Scott Harold, who is studying the military relationship between China and the United States for the RAND Corporation, echoed that view. "There is a mutual suspicion by each side of the other's growing capabilities," he said.
The Chinese have acquired or are developing a variety of weapons and technologies that would enable them to put into practice the doctrine of "anti-access, area denial," Mr. Harold said. The basic idea is to block American access to strategic waterways, particularly the seas off China's coast.
Among the weapons to advance the doctrine are ultraquiet submarines and advanced surface vessels equipped with antiship cruise missiles, Mr. Harold said. China is also testing ballistic missiles that can strike an aircraft carrier, he said.
In addition, China has built an advanced cyberprogram designed to disable a potential enemy's command-and-control capabilities, Mr. Harold said.
In response to the Chinese doctrine, Pentagon planners are devising a military fighting concept called the "air-sea battle strategy" that would ensure that the American military could deploy over great distances to defend United States allies and interests.
"I wouldn't characterize the situation as an arms race, but competitive military modernization through hardware and, more important, in doctrine," Mr. Harold said.
A major reason for the limited nature of the military talks between Beijing and Washington, American officials say, is the Chinese position that the United States must abide by three conditions: stopping arms sales to Taiwan, halting close-in maritime and airborne surveillance of China, and scrapping restrictions in the National Defense Authorization Act that prevent the export of American technologies deemed to have military use for China.
The export restrictions are unfair and demonstrate the United States' determination to keep China in an inferior position, said Yan Xuetong, the dean of modern international relations at Tsinghua University.
"The arms embargo is a clear indication that the United States does not want China to become a military power," said Mr. Yan, a prominent professor who reflects a more nationalistic belief among Chinese academics.
Military competition between the two powers is inevitable and should be recognized as such, he said.
The United States talked about more cooperation, but the Chinese military asked itself, " 'What can I benefit from this cooperation, what payoff does the P.L.A. get?' " Mr. Yan said, referring to the People's Liberation Army.
"We think the U.S. is hypocritical when they say, 'We want this cooperation for your benefit,' " he added.
There should be more contact between the two sides in the mode of "negative cooperation," Mr. Yan said.
"That way," he added, "we can work together to prevent war between us."
Correction: May 3, 2012, Thursday
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An article on Tuesday about President Obama's decision to use a speech on Monday to gently prod China to improve its human rights record, but not to discuss the case of a prominent Chinese dissident lawyer said to be under American protection in Beijing, misstated the name of the high-level talks between the countries that are set to begin there today. And an article on Wednesday about limited military talks gave another incorrect rendering of the name of the broader talks. Those high-level talks are the Strategic and Economic Dialogue - not the Strategic Economic Dialogue or the Strategic and Security Dialogue.
