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China gaining upper hand over Taiwan, US senator says

MORE INVOLVEMENT: Diane Feinstein said with China's military rising fast, the US needed to step up its communications with both sides of the Strait

CNA , SAN FRANCISCO

US Senator Diane Feinstein said Sunday that only by maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and increasing cross-strait bilateral exchanges can Taiwan and China solve their differences peacefully.

Addressing the annual meeting of the Asia Society in a keynote speech entitled A Rising China, Feinstein said that China's rapidly expanding military strength and the Democratic Progressive Party's taking power in Taiwan have impacted cross-Taiwan Strait stability.

Feinstein said that China has accelerated its arms build-up in recent years, with its reported military spending rising by 16 percent over the past two years. She added that the actual figure could be three times higher. She also pointed to the some 700 Chinese missiles targeting Taiwan. Feinstein said that all this is upsetting the delicate balance that has been in place in the Taiwan Strait for decades.

In Taiwan, meanwhile, landmark visits to China by opposition leaders Lien Chan and James Soong have left President Chen Shui-bian little option to avoid the "China issue," Feinstein said.

Noting that time is on China's side, Feinstein claimed that Beijing will soon gain the upper hand in military and economic influence across the Taiwan Strait.

In light of this, she added, Washington should continue its "status quo" policy in the Taiwan Strait, while at the same time intensifying its communications with governments in both China and Taiwan to prevent any undesirable situation from occurring.

Feinstein said that China is expected to have huge influence in Asia in the future, and the US has monitored related developments closely.

She called for Washington to pay equally close attention to Asia as it does to Europe, saying that the US should establish a US-China crisis management mechanism to enable the US to effectively handle any crises that might arise.

Feinstein said that the US should increase high-level military visits with China to reduce misunderstanding and as a way to help solve cross-strait issues peacefully.

She also said she foresees increasingly closer exchanges between China and Taiwan in the commercial and cultural sectors in the years to come, and that China's booming economy will help push for democratization within the country.

China’s ambassador to Australia dismisses spy claims

'WILD' STORIES: Fu Ying said that claims by an employee of the Chinese consulate in Sydney that Beijing has 1,000 spies operating in Australia were lacking in credibility

REUTERS, CANBERRA

A Chinese diplomat who has asked for asylum in Australia after claiming spies were hunting him for aiding pro democracy groups should not fear returning home, China's ambassador to Australia said yesterday.

Fu Ying said Chen Yonglin, a 37-year-old political affairs consul at China's consulate in Sydney, was only making a bid for Australian citizenship and laughed off his claims that Beijing had 1,000 spies in Australia and he could be kidnapped and returned home.

"You must be surprised the Chinese ambassador can find time to attend this ceremony since ... she is operating a huge spy network," Fu told reporters at a book launch in Canberra.

"The store about security people chasing him are quite wild. I don’t have security for myself. Where do we find the security people to chase him? I think he is making ti up, " Fu said.

Falun Gong is an amalgam of religions, meditation and exercises that the Chinese government considers an evil cult. Australian Falun Gong members staged a protest outside China's Sydney consulate on Monday in support of Chen.

"I don't see there's any reason that he needs to be afraid. I don't see there is any reason China will punish him," Fu said.

At the Asian security conference in Singapore on Saturday, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld vehemently criticized China's continued acquisition of missiles and the development of its air force and navy. This, he said, was not only creating a military imbalance in the Taiwan Strait, it was also threatening the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific.

Rumsfeld's talk was intended as a preview of the Pentagon's annual report on China's military to be released later this week. This report maintains the Defense Department's consistently held concerns embodied in the so-called "China Threat" theory, but it also specifically switches the focus from the Taiwan Strait to the entire Asia-Pacific region. It advises caution in no uncertain terms over the danger presented to the region by the expansion of the Chinese military.

The US is not the only nation to feel uneasy. Last year a Japan Defense Agency report identified China as a potential security threat, and the question of including Taiwan in the scope of the US-Japan Security Pact was discussed. In March and April, massive anti-Japanese protests erupted in China. Sino-Japanese relations were further tested with the appearance of Chinese submarines and other vessels in Japanese waters, giving Tokyo all the more reason for concern.

China has long chanted its mantra of "peaceful rise" in an attempt to calm its neighbors and the international community as a whole over its military, economic and political expansionism. But with passage of its "Anti-Secession" Law in March, the international community saw the true face of China. Criticism and censure followed, and the EU decided to postpone lifting its arms embargo.

The "China Threat theory" is no longer a possibility -- the threat is a reality. Taiwan has had to deal with this threat on its own for some time, but now other countries are gradually beginning to get the message. The Singapore meeting is just the starting point for international action, and hopefully we will see even more countries facing up to the threat posed by China's expansionism with more concrete action. Perhaps this will all lead to new policies designed to contain China.

Taiwan is at the center of the First Island Chain, the front line constraining China's expansion. It has shouldered this burden for more than 60 years, but now people in Taiwan and the US are becoming increasingly concerned that it will become a breach in the chain. The hurdles faced by the arms procurement bill in the legislature means that the imbalance in military strength between the two sides of the Strait will increase. The lack of commitment to self-defense might encourage China to take advantage of the situation with a military move.

China is now trying "panda diplomacy" to win over the Taiwanese people. The high status accorded to the visits of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan and People First Party Chairman James Soong was simply a carrot-and-stick routine to manipulate Taiwanese politicians. Unless Taiwan is willing to become China's docile pet, it should bare its teeth and win some respect. It needs defensive weapons to do this. The military gap between the two sides of the Strait is widening daily, causing the international community to lose its faith in commitment of the Taiwanese people. Eventually, if this is left unchecked, Taiwan will lose its self-confidence.

For Taiwan's sake and for regional security, the legislature should hold an additional session to pass the arms procurement bill as soon as possible.

Sixteen years ago, under the rapt gaze of the international media, students around China brought a ray of hope for Chinese democracy by launching a democracy movement and erecting a "Goddess of Democracy" on Tiananmen Square. But the movement was suppressed, leaving sighs of regret and questions regarding China's future development. Will China democratize? Are there other roads for China, besides democracy?

These are also questions that the people of Taiwan are asking themselves, because the question of whether or not China will adopt liberal democracy is an important benchmark for Taiwan as it considers its future relationship with China.

The third wave of democratization, which began in the mid-1970s, took different routes, but almost all routes had one thing in common: following economic improvements by authoritarian governments, people's incomes shot up, their education levels improved and their international experience increased, leading them to demand better opportunities for individual development and political participation.

Although not every democracy prospered and not every wealthy country became a democracy, the strong relationship between economic and political development cannot be denied. As calls for democracy and freedom grow stronger, authoritarian systems could choose to go with the flow of developments and gradually implement political reform, or oppose the democratic wave. This led to different roads towards democratization.

Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constantly developed the Chinese economy since the early 1980s, it may not have considered the fact that economic and social development will necessarily have a political impact. Regardless of whether it is ignited by economic and social issues in the countryside or in the cities, it is only a matter of time before China will see its next wave of democracy movements. The 1989 democracy movement showed us how that wave once again will become the focus of international media attention.

Some people may take an optimistic opinion that the fourth generation of CCP leaders will be more flexible and pragmatic, and that they will allow gradual liberalization and political reform. There is, however, a difference between expectations and real life.

At the fourth plenary session of the 16th Central Committee on Sept. 19 last year, the CCP leadership criticized the media. It said the party could not take a lenient approach toward the media and make the mistake of promoting Western bourgeois liberalization, and that it was therefore forced to strengthen the management of the news media and public opinion. Ten days later, an alarming instruction was issued in a document from the party's Publicity Department: "When managing ideology, we have to learn from Cuba and North Korea."

Then, in March, the same department issued regulations requiring all reporters and editors to affirm Marxism-Leninism, Maoism and the thought of the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and his "Three Represents," as well as to support the CCP leadership. Since the middle of last year, New York Times reporter Zhao Yan (趙岩) and Ching Cheong of Singapore's Straits Times have been detained, each for a different reason.

There have also been several waves of suppression of academic research, including Peking University's firing of a professor named Jiao, the arrest of the well-known academic Lu Jianhua at the Chinese Academy for Social Studies, the closing down of Internet bulletin boards, and the persecution of well known poets and writers. Access to Internet information from democracies around the world, including the Internet editions of the United Daily News and China Times, have also been blocked.

On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, the CCP prohibited a Chinese reporter from receiving the 2005 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. An international journalists' organization described China as the world's largest prison for journalists, and Freedom House in the US ranked press freedom in China 177th in the world.

The Chinese people may not even be aware that so many heartbreaking things have happened over the past few months. These worrying incidents cannot, however, stop a multitude of spontaneous protests. The frequency and vehemence of social protests in China is constantly on the rise, a result of the public's increasing self awareness, which in its turn is the result of economic and social development.

The CCP still has enough power to remain in control, and it doesn't show any wish to implement reform. But 16 years ago we saw how China's intellectuals gathered in Tiananmen Square, and how it is impossible to hide the Chinese people's unwillingness to live in a prison. The CCP government must also face up to the fact that the only way it can develop is to follow the road towards democracy. Only by learning from Taiwan's political development can the CCP build a new China.