Implications of China-Taiwan crisis

Implications of China-Taiwan crisis

Although China's current tension with Taiwan is a domestic
affair, it will have an impact on the region, writes Dewi Fortuna
Anwar.

JAKARTA (JP): The heightening tension between China and Taiwan
clearly demonstrates one of the reasons why we do not talk about
the peace dividend in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Besides the China-Taiwan conflict there are still a host of
other unresolved bilateral and territorial issues which continue
to hamper the development of regional peace and stability in the
wider Asia Pacific region.

In any discussion about Southeast Asian security China always
looms large. China's sheer size alone is sufficient to put its
much smaller neighbors to the south on guard. But added to
China's overwhelming size is the fact that in the past five
decades relations between Southeast Asia and China have been
mostly problematic.

During the Cold War most of the non-communist countries in
Southeast Asia saw communist China as a major threat to their
security. A number of these countries even went so far as to join
military alliances with the United States and other Western
powers in an effort to contain communism in general, and Chinese
communism in particular.

Although Indonesia under president Sukarno developed very
close ties with China, Jakarta froze its diplomatic relations
with Beijing after the New Order government came to power. It
accused China of being involved in the abortive communist coup of
1965. Indonesia, however, never took part in an anti-China
alliance. Even Vietnam's earlier close relations with China
soured after Hanoi sided with Moscow in the Sino-Soviet conflict,
culminating in a border war between the two countries in 1979.

In view of these formerly difficult relations between most of
Southeast Asia and China, a special effort is clearly needed by
both sides to remove the suspicions and to build trust. The
ending of the Cold War has provided challenges as well as
creating opportunities in moving in this direction. While in
other parts of the world defense spending has suffered major
cuts, the reverse has been observed in the Asia Pacific region.

Although the reasons are varied, there is no denying the fact
that most countries in the Asia Pacific region have increased
their military spending and are engaged in the modernization of
their defense systems.

For the bigger countries the demise of the bi-polar security
structure has clearly provided an opportunity to play a much
bigger role in regional affairs than ever before. For these
countries, therefore, the refurbishing of their defense systems
is clearly not only intended for deterrence purposes but also as
power projection. In such a situation smaller countries have also
been pushed towards spending more money on arms to enhance their
defense capability.

Fortunately, most of the countries in the Asia Pacific region
agree on the importance of multilateral security dialogs. The
ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was established in 1994 precisely to
ensure that the new regional challenges do not turn into threats.

All of the ASEAN countries regard having cordial relations
with China as essential for regional stability. China's
willingness to take part in multilateral security dialogs have
created a pool of goodwill among the ASEAN countries toward
Beijing. The ARF is an important, and so far the only Asia
Pacific-wide, forum for confidence building and preventive
diplomacy. China's participation in the Indonesian-sponsored
Workshops on the South China Sea has also been welcomed as an
indication of Beijing's desire to resolve territorial disputes
peacefully.

It is, therefore, with mounting alarm that one witnesses the
escalating conflict across the Taiwan strait. Old suspicions and
fears of China's regional ambitions and predilections for using
force to settle conflicts unavoidably come again to the surface.
China's occupation of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, an
atoll claimed by the Philippines, in February 1995 had already
shaken some of the regional confidence in China. After that
incident China succeeded in winning ASEAN's favor again by
showing a conciliatory approach at the ARF meeting in Brunei in
July 1995. China's very real current threat to Taiwan is a purely
internal matter which should not affect other countries in the
region. But other countries in the region cannot but be affected
by China's behavior and its possible implications for future
regional peace and stability.

One of the most worrying aspects of the present Taiwan crisis
is the absolute contempt shown by Beijing towards international
opinion. Another cause for concern is the fact that complex
interdependence and all manner of economic and technological
linkages which now exist between Taiwan and the mainland are not
sufficient to "tame" China. Can one, therefore, really expect
China to behave with restraint and circumspection in dealing with
other countries if it feels that its vital interests are at
stake?

We clearly hope that the present crisis across the Taiwan
Strait will pass without causing further harm. But it will take
more time and effort for China to win back the trust of the ASEAN
countries. While ASEAN continues to regard engaging China as an
important security strategy, it can be expected that the ASEAN
countries will now pay even more attention to their conventional
defense capability. Furthermore, the demonstration of China's
military prowess and its willingness to fight may push the
members of ASEAN towards closer intra-ASEAN military cooperation.
It is not inconceivable that the presence of a clear external
threat would persuade the ASEAN countries to move away from
bilateral military relations into a more cohesive multilateral
structure.

The writer is a senior researcher at the Indonesian Institute
of Sciences.