Dangerous arms race across the Taiwan Straits

By John Gittings

HONG KONG: Ten years ago Asia was shaken by the internal political turmoil in China. Now, on the 10th anniversary of the Beijing massacre, it is external tension in the region that is prompting great concern.

The vision of next century Asia as peaceful, dynamic and entrepreneurial has turned into a nightmare where old enmities rear up and new missiles lurk in deep silos. The warm sentiments exchanged by presidents Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin a year ago in Beijing now belong to some earlier age. Even without the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing of China's Belgrade embassy and the Cox committee report accusing China of nuclear spying, the air is clouded with suspicion.

Japan has just signed a new defense arrangement with the United States to deal with unspecified future "military contingencies". The Philippines is allowing American ships back into its ports while squabbling with Beijing over the suitably named Mischief Reef in the South China Sea. Taiwan counts the missiles pointing at it from the mainland, and Beijing reminds us that it has "never renounced the use of force".

The United States has developed plans for a theater missile defense -- a sort of mini star wars package for Asia, details in the box. Even North Korea has fired a missile to show it too is in the game. This is a region where three great powers (the United States, China and Japan) rub shoulders plus a fourth former one (Russia). Regional stability can no longer be taken for granted. But has the pendulum swung too far towards pessimism in the shadow of the economic crisis and the souring of U.S.- China relations? Or was it always naive to suppose that Asia could ever put past strategic rivalries behind it?

From Mao Zedong on, Chinese foreign policy has been based on the "theory of contradictions": the task was to decide whether hostile or friendly forces in the outside world have the upper hand. Hardliners in Beijing may have taken advantage of the Belgrade embassy bombing but mainstream leaders already regarded American policy towards China as equivocal. Before the bombing -- while premier Zhu Rongji headed for the United States to pursue friendship diplomacy -- president Jiang Zemin denounced NATO's gunboat diplomacy in Yugoslavia and told China's military leaders that the world is not safe, warning them to prepare for the possibility of regional warfare.

Japan's new defense guidelines are seen by Chinese analysts as part of a global picture. The United States, said the China Daily last week, is seeking "to turn NATO and the U.S.-Japan alliance into a fortress over Europe and Asia". It is an open secret in Tokyo that the guidelines have been revised with the prospect of a stronger China very much in mind. The new rules say that Japan is entitled to back up American action in "surrounding areas" -- a concept said to be not geographical but situational. Does this mean, Beijing asks, that Japan would support the U.S. to stop it regaining Taiwan?

There are worries on the other side of the Taiwan Straits. American defense interests, eager to drum up support for theater missile defense, have been busy spreading alarm about China's alleged 600 missiles pointing at the island. Speaker after speaker at a recent conference in Kaohsiung, organized by Taiwan's air force academy, invoked the magic figure seven -- the number of minutes it takes a Chinese missile to cross from the mainland. "They are well dug in with many dummy exits," Taiwanese defense analyst Chang Jen-fu says. "Even satellite intelligence will never spot a launch in time."

For strategic commentator Alex Kao, the missiles are not the real threat. Mainland troops would come by sea and it would take much less than 10 hours -- the period of time on which all Taiwan defense planning is based. "They could be building a fleet of super-fast landing boats. They'll get here first, and present the U.S. with a fait accompli: escalate the war, or abandon Taiwan!"

But why after decades of stalemate should armed conflict even be an option? China's insistence that it has never renounced the use of force is surely nothing new.

The reason to be more worried now, says Kao, is precisely because China will not wait another 50 years. With Hong Kong and Macau rejoining China, no self-respecting Beijing leadership can let the Taiwan situation drag on.

A perceptive Taiwanese diplomat sees it more as a problem of impatience in Taipei than in Beijing. "The real danger is that our pro-independence people will do something stupid, like buying a stake in the American missile defense. Beijing has already said this would provoke military counter-measures." Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui could himself be tempted to do something provocative. He has just published a book advocating a Great China concept with full autonomy for Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia and former Manchuria. It did not go down at all well in Beijing.

Meanwhile the Philippines has just opened the way for the United States to resume naval visits and military exercises. Manila's verbal war with Beijing over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea has stepped up. China says it will only talk on a bilateral basis about the disputed reefs and islets with its neighbors: it refuses a multilateral approach.

China's military capability is still relatively modest. Experts say it is only superior to its neighbors in missile technology. But Beijing has already said it wants to become a first-rate military power within decades: after Belgrade, they may be seeking to achieve it in a much shorter space of time.

No row can go on at the same intensity for ever. Beijing has started talking about "friendly cooperation", while the White House is urging Congress to renew China's trade privileges. But the Clinton-Jiang concept of building a serious strategic partnership is not going to be revived. The love-in is over. Asia waits to see what will replace it.

-- Guardian News Service