China's National Defense Ministry has announced that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates will visit China from January 9th to 12th next year at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart General Liang Guanglie.

It will be the first military talks between the two nations since tension escalated on the Korean Peninsula last month. Chinese officials say they hope the visit can help improve mutual trust and ways to properly handle crises in the region.

Military ties between the two nations were greatly strained following the Pentagon's decision to sell nearly 6.4-billion-US-dollars worth of arms to Taiwan earlier this year. Relations gradually returned to normal after the countries' two military chiefs held talks in Hanoi, Vietnam on the sidelines of the first ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting this autumn.