In February, Capt. James Fanell, the director of intelligence and information operations with the United States Pacific Fleet, said that China was training its forces to be capable of carrying out a “short, sharp” war with Japan in the East China Sea. Other American officials noted with increasing concern the buildup of China’s military and what they called a lack of transparency among its leaders.

Into all this arrives Mr. Hagel, who will touch down first in Qingdao, the headquarters of one of China’s three naval fleets. Mr. Hagel will visit the People’s Liberation Army’s aircraft carrier, the first foreign visitor that China has allowed aboard, a United States defense official said. Qingdao is the same place that the Chinese showed to Mr. Hagel’s predecessor, Leon E. Panetta, two years ago.

Now China is showing the Americans its aircraft carrier, which is a step beyond the tour that Mr. Panetta received in 2012. But one thing has not changed; as was the case with the Panetta trip, reporters traveling with Mr. Hagel will not be permitted on the tour and will go instead to a local beer brewing factory.

During a news conference on Sunday with Japan’s minister of defense, Itsunori Onodera, Mr. Hagel sounded exasperated with China.

“I will be talking with the Chinese about its respect for their neighbors,” he said, as he chided China and urged the country to use its “great power” in a responsible way. “You cannot go around the world and redefine boundaries and violate territorial integrity and the sovereignty of nations by force, coercion or intimidation, whether it’s in small islands in the Pacific or in large nations in Europe,” he said.

Pentagon officials said Mr. Hagel had no official plans to raise the fleet review issue during his talks with officials in China, but they allowed that the issue might come up anyway.

Japan’s occupation of China during World War II is part of the reason Beijing does not like the idea of Japanese ships’ taking part in the fleet review, Asia experts said. But the experts also expressed alarm over China’s recent worldwide public relations campaign to increase criticism of Japan. Dozens of Chinese ambassadors have criticized Japan in letters written to global newspapers; in one, China’s ambassador to Britain compared Japan to the evil Lord Voldemort of “Harry Potter” fame. The shunning of Japan’s fleet, analysts said, is just the latest in the anti-Japan campaign underway in China.