Gong-beating in modern garb

Tension appears to be rising in East Asia both in the Taiwan Straits and in Korea. In the first of several articles our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin examines the way in which the media is exaggerating the tension between China and Taiwan, and how this relates to the overall security situation.

HONG KONG (JP): In the Taiwan Straits for the moment Gunboat Diplomacy is out. Verbal bombastic intimidation is in.

Since ancient times, Chinese generals sometimes adopted the practice of banging gongs and making a great noise all with the aim of persuading "the enemy" that their army was stronger than was actually the case. That concept is making a comeback in modern garb as media manipulation seeks to convey the impression that China is more of a superpower than it actually is.

The Hong Kong press should be using its critical faculties in an effort to be a bridge between the two separate parts of a yet- to-be united China. Instead, the press and television here, and, through them, the global media, unwisely and unprofessionally seem to be accepting the role of gong-beater.

So the always brittle relationship between Taiwan and China has continued to win a plethora of negative headlines in the world's press. Nearly all of these suggest ever increasing tension in the Taiwan Straits. Yet the crisis remains mainly verbal with few if any tangible signs of any immediate clash.

On the surface, Taiwan provoked the crisis a little over a month ago by seeming to abandon its belief in there being only One China. This heresy in turn sparked a torrent of invective from China. Taiwan announced an ostensible change of policy under which relations with China would be characterized as state-to- state relations. In China's inflexible and maybe unseeing eyes, this was conduct unbecoming a renegade province whose fate must be to reunite with the motherland.

For the last five weeks, that torrent of China's invective against President Lee has been unceasing. China has waged a psychological warfare campaign -- that is the modern phrase for gong-beating -- which has, so far, not been successful in forcing Taiwan, and its President Lee Teng-hui, onto the defensive.

Recently, President Lee seemingly escalated the verbal exchanges by suggesting that Taiwan would try to join the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) scheme. The TMD plan is an anathema to China mainly because it aims to provide defense against missile attacks, and China is clearly basing much of its future military strategy on the deployment of missiles. Additionally, Beijing fears that any TMD scheme will inevitably be extended to cover Taiwan.

As it happened, the first research agreement on TMD was signed in Tokyo on Aug. 16, by Japan and the United States. All along it has been expected that Taiwan will try to join TMD, given its experience with China's "missile diplomacy" in 1995-1996 when Beijing test-fired medium range missiles into the waters around Taiwan. That incident also started Japan and the U.S. thinking about theater missile defense long before North Korea added to their anxieties on Aug. 31, 1998 with its own missile shot. So in a very real sense China has only itself to blame for setting TMD in motion in the first place.

Whether Taiwan will be able to join the scheme remains uncertain. But unnamed "Beijing sources" have predictably gone verbally ballistic in reaction to President Lee's comment that TMD "not only meets the needs of the current situation but also is in line with the long-term interest of the country." Whether the anger was over TMD or over his use, once again, of the Chinese word guojia (country, state or nation) for what the Middle Kingdom only recognizes as a renegade province is uncertain.

In any event, China also has only itself to blame for resurrecting the missile issue, since "unnamed Chinese sources" recently told the Sing Tao Daily in Hong Kong that China had developed such a precise cruise missile that it could even hit President Lee's office desk.

The missile is similar to the U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile, the report went on, and "even if it missed Mr Lee's office desk, it could hit the sofa or pots of plants next to the desk", the unnamed source reportedly said.

On the same day as the Sing Tao reported this, another Hong Kong Chinese-language paper, the Ming Pao Daily News quoted sources, also unnamed, as saying that the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party was looking into "various possible military tactics, and was keen to engage in a war against Taiwan".

All this perfectly illustrates the nature of the current "crisis" so far.

Unnamed Chinese sources endlessly exude fire and brimstone in the direction of Taiwan, hinting that punitive action is just around the corner unless Taiwan backs down.

These comments are uncritically reported by the now less-than- free press in Hong Kong. These reports are backed up on Hong Kong and other TV channels by numerous clips of PLA soldiers plodding up undefended beaches, and PLA ships firing endless salvos from their rocket launchers. The media unthinkingly creates the illusion of an invasion just around the corner.

As these comments and footage seem to indicate a gravely deepening crisis, they are then picked up, also often uncritically, by the international news agencies and newspapers -- and portrayed as signs of increasing tension in the Taiwan Straits. The whole illusion is rounded off as "experts" who are "friends of China" -- and usually American -- pontificate endlessly on the ways in which "China's growing power" must be appeased.

Apart from the words, there are virtually no substantial reasons for anticipating that China's invective will lead to hostilities in the Taiwan Straits anytime soon unless rationality has really flown out of the Zhongnanhai windows, as the Chinese Communist Party prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the People's Republic China (PRC).

One Taiwan owned freighter, the Shin Hwa, was detained on July 31 by the Chinese, as it sought to resupply Taiwan's offshore islands. Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) faxed China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) in mid-August asking for help in securing the vessel's release. No reply has yet been reported.

Single Chinese Air Force jets twice crossed the median line in the Taiwan Straits late last month and early this. But the jets turned back of their own volition while still far out to sea, and in any case did not penetrate as deeply as, say, Pakistan's intruding Atlantique aircraft did when it was recently shot down by India.

There are reliable indications of stepped up patrols by both China's and Taiwan's jet aircraft in the Straits but so far they have prudently kept out of each others way.

There are no signs of any major force build-ups, such as would be necessary to carry out the kind of operations which the bombast diplomacy suggests are imminent. Reports of heightened states of alert do not seem to match with the situation on the ground in China, either in China's "front-line" Fujian province or elsewhere.

The numerous hints of a grave crisis, just around the corner, which appear in the Hong Kong press are generally not even matched in the controlled mainland media, except in the Liberation Army Daily, the mouthpiece of the Peoples Liberation Army. Of course, President Lee Teng-hui is regularly attacked and abused with the usual Chinese rhetoric ("sinner of 10,000 years"), and his title of President is placed in inverted commas. But, for the most part, the attacks on the Falun Gong sect and its mystical leader Li Hongzhi have recently received far more attention in the Chinese media.

Neither the Taiwanese military, nor the Americans, both of whom have strong reasons for seeing if China's verbal bellicosity are being matched by deeds, have not reported any signs of a threatening military build-up. Certainly a massive military buildup is underway near Beijing -- but this is for the huge procession due on the PRC's 50th anniversary on Oct. 1.

Against this background, there ought to be some passionate Chinese voices raised to criticize China's brinkmanship, and to insist that reopening China's civil war would be catastrophic for the Chinese people and the Chinese nation. If there are any such voices, you cannot read about them in the so-called free Hong Kong press. China's bombast diplomacy is intimidating silence in Hong Kong but not acquiescence in Taiwan.