China getting edgy over U.S. Pacific buildup

China getting edgy over U.S. Pacific buildup

Robert J. Saiget, Agence France-Presse, Beijing

China is getting edgy over a new U.S. military strategy aimed at projecting force around the globe and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's visit last week was an attempt to calm Beijing down, analysts said.

Rice's trip on last Thursday and Friday came as the U.S. military was rolling out an unprecedented deployment of naval power to the Pacific Ocean in what is officially being termed a military exercise, they said.

"It is an unprecedented show of force and a return to gun boat diplomacy," Andrew Tam, a security expert at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore, told AFP.

"The U.S. is sending the message that any threat to peace and stability in Northeast Asia will not be tolerated.

"It is a signal to North Korea, but particularly to the Chinese. The carrier groups are sent as an affirmation of the U.S. support of the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and the current status of Taiwan."

The U.S. navy announced in June that three aircraft carrier battle groups were already in the Pacific and four others were being deployed for the war games called Summer Pulse 2004.

According to U.S. naval websites, the deployment is a part of the Fleet Response Plan, which is aimed at increasing force preparedness and establishing the ability to immediately provide significant combat power in a crisis anywhere in the world.

It comes with Beijing rattling sabers over Taiwan since pro- independence President Chen Shui-bian was inaugurated for his second term on May 20, and with China due to start this month massive amphibious military exercises on mainland-ruled islands in the Taiwan Straits.

During her visit, Rice reiterated Washington's respect for Beijing's "one China policy" and its opposition to Taiwan independence, while urging China to push forward efforts at resolving the simmering issue over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

In 1996, the U.S. sent two aircraft carrier groups to the Taiwan Strait after China tested ballistic missiles by lobbing them off shore from Taiwan's major ports.

That deployment was its biggest to the region since the Vietnam War.

In the past week, the Chinese press has slammed the U.S. military exercises, with the leading People's Daily outlining a perceived U.S. plan to build up a line of defense in the Western Pacific that starts with Japan and extends down China's coastline through Taiwan and the Philippines.

"The U.S. global strategic review not only again fully exposes a wild ambition for world domination, but at the same time also shows its intent on taking unilateral actions in every part of the world," the paper said.

The China Daily called the U.S. forward deployment in Asia "a hidden menace to peace and stability in the region."

"The U.S. factor in the region will complicate relations between Asia-Pacific powers," it said.

The editorials couple with Beijing demanding an end to U.S. high-tech weapons sales to Taiwan as U.S. concerns over the build up of some 500 ballistic missiles on China's southeastern Fujian province across from Taiwan appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

"Clearly the problem for China is that they have backed themselves in a corner on the Taiwan issue, their strategy on Taiwan has failed (and) they have not been able to isolate Chen Shui-bian," Brad Glosserman, research director of the Pacific Forum of the Center for International Strategic Studies, told AFP.

Beijing's increasingly belligerent attitude toward Taiwan over the last decade has not only been ineffective in bringing the island closer to peaceful reunification, but has pushed it farther toward independence, he said.

"Condoleezza Rice went to assure them that the U.S. policy remains the same, that the United States is against any unilateral change of the status quo in the Taiwan Straits," Glosserman said.

"She also probably told them that they need not be so worried about this (deployment) issue and that they need to come up with a more creative solution on the Taiwan issue."