US admiral sees many `challenges' in US-China ties

AP , CAMP H.M. SMITH, HAWAII

The commander of US forces in the Pacific said that Americans face "significant challenges" in dealing with China because of issues like the Taiwan Strait, but he hopes to deepen bilateral understanding by boosting defense ties.

Admiral William Fallon said a confluence of factors complicate relations between the Pacific's two biggest military powers, such as Beijing's threat to use force to unite Taiwan and China, and Beijing's ballooning trade surplus with the US.

Fallon, who oversees US military forces in an area stretching from the US West Coast to the Indian Ocean, said the complexities and challenges faced by the region meant the two nations would need to cooperate.

"There is ample ground for common work in many areas," Fallon said in an interview on Wednesday at Camp H.M. Smith overlooking Pearl Harbor. "I'd like to explore areas in which we can move forward in a useful manner."

He said the countries have common interests, ranging from prodding North Korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons to ensuring the safe passage of trade through the Malacca Straits in Southeast Asia.

The need for an international response to natural disasters like the Dec. 26 tsunami in the Indian Ocean added to the reasons the countries should work together, he said.

Fallon hopes to visit China, perhaps sometime this year, and build relationships with his Chinese counterparts. Chinese officials and the US Embassy in Beijing were working out dates and details for a trip, said Fallon, who took over the command in February.

Personal interaction is key, he said.

"It's been my experience that unless we get to know people, we tend to view them through the lens of suspicion, of ignorance. We begin to rely upon secondhand opinions and rumors rather than our own firsthand experiences," Fallon said.

If Washington approves, Fallon said, he hopes to build on the military ties between the two nations, which now are limited to a small number of port visits and the exchange of senior-level personnel.

The Chinese military has come under increasing scrutiny as Beijing has sharply boosted defense spending in recent years.

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in May asked why China was increasing its investment so dramatically if it wasn't threatened by another country.

Fallon said the US was not providing China with a reason to build up its forces.

"I don't see a threat, I don't want to be perceived as the military commander here to be offering or proposing a threat to China," Fallon said.

On Taiwan, Fallon said the US was committed to current policies regarding Taiwan and China, meaning the unspoken deal under which Beijing refrains from attacking Taiwan so long as it doesn't declare independence.

"We are not in favor of unilateral actions that would upset the status quo while we give the parties the opportunity to work together to come up with a solution that's going to be peacefully acceptable to all those concerned," Fallon said.

He added he would do his utmost so that the situation was resolved peacefully.

Don't read too much into Chen's words, MAC says

CHOICE: A MAC official said that each party had to decide on visits to China, and that Chen was referring to a planned DPP trip in recent remarks

By Shih Hsiu-chuan

STAFF REPORTER, WITH CNA

President Chen Shui-bian's recent statements discouraging Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators from visiting China should not be viewed as indicative of the government's overall policy on cross-strait communications, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Vice Chairman Huang Wei-feng said at a press conference yesterday.

On Thursday, Chen said, "Some legislators are proposing visits to China, but I think there is presently no need for further communication ... between Taiwan and China."

After that statement, five Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers who had scheduled a visit to China to attend an economics forum called off their trip.

Asked to comment on Chen's statement, Huang said, "His remarks were aimed at DPP legislators. Each party must consider on its own whether or not to visit China."

Saying that regulations on party-to-party communication across the Strait had not changed, Huang said the President's words should not be "over-interpreted" as applying to other parties besides the DPP.

The leaders of the New Party, are currently visiting China, following on the heels of visits in April and May by KMT Chairman Lien Chan and People First Party Chairman James Soong.

New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming said his party's trip aimed to underscore Taiwan's historic ties with China and commemorate the 60th anniversary of China's defeat of invading Japanese troops during World War II.

The MAC will not take a position on each party's trips to China, and will not become involved in a party's internal decision-making, Huang said.

In related news, Huang declined to comment on discussions between a plan-blue delegation to China and Chinese officials on exporting Taiwanese produce.

A pan-blue legislator who is part of the delegation yesterday proposed a plan to expedite procedures for transporting Taiwanese produce.

Tseng Yung-chuan, executive director of the KMT's Central Policy Committee and the leader of the agricultural promotional delegation visiting Beijing, made the proposal during a meeting at the Diaoyutais Guest House with officials from China's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO).

Tseng suggested that direct charter flights be set up to transport Taiwanese produce to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and that fast-track customs services be put in place to deal with the imports.

KMT spokesman Chang Jung-kung was upbeat on the discussions in Beijing. Chang said that the TAO had reaffirmed its intention to eliminate tariffs on imports of 15 types of Taiwanese fruits, but that it also repeated its preference to negotiate the details with the Taiwan Provincial Farmers' Association rather than the Taiwan External Trade and Development Council (TAITRA).

TAITRA is the only group that has authorization from the Taiwanese government to conduct negotiations on fruit exports.

The pan-blue delegation was scheduled to return to Taiwan at 11:45pm last night.

US must plan for Chinese military buildup: analysts

ARMS RACE: As Beijing modernizes its army, the US must invest more in military technology to hold its own against China's future might, conservative panelists said

AP , WASHINGTON

The US must keep watch over China's military buildup and plan its own defense strategy accordingly, analysts said Thursday at an event sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank.

China has been investing in aircraft, munitions and communications systems while also overhauling its military management and training policies, analysts on the panel said. The Pentagon must consider the ramifications of these changes as it plots its own 20-year strategy during this year's quadrennial defense review.

Dan Goure of the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area defense policy group, said the US needs to invest in enough new destroyers, submarines and stealth aircraft to hold its own against a modern Chinese military. He said the US runs the risk of losing sight of this need as it focuses on fighting terrorists and other rogue adversaries.

"We're going to have to balance that," Goure said.

China's new military might is probably aimed at protecting its coastline and also building strength in case of conflict in the Taiwan Strait, panelists said. China probably isn't directly planning to confront the US, but there could be a showdown if any of the principal players miscalculates and sparks a conflict, they said.

The Pentagon needs to revisit budget-driven cuts to its state-of-the-art programs, Goure said. Under current budget plans, the Defense Department plans to buy only about 180 F/A-22 stealth fighters, made by Lockheed Martin Corp, down from initial expectations of 750 new planes.

Ship purchases also have been slashed. The Navy now expects to buy only five DD(X) destroyers in the next six years, four fewer than previous plans called for, and it also has cut its expected purchases of Virginia-class submarines. Both types of vessel are made by Northrop Grumman Corp and General Dynamics Corp and carry multibillion-dollar price tags.

Budget concerns should be at the forefront of any consideration of China-related strategy issues, said Michael Krepon of the Henry L. Stimson Center, an independent policy group that studies peace and security issues. China owns more than US$230 billion in US government securities, meaning the US pays it billions of dollars in interest each year.

``When we talk about China's military modernization program, we also need to talk about our debt,'' Krepon said, saying the US is effectively subsidizing China's defense purchases.

Krepon and Heritage Foundation fellow Baker Spring squared off over whether the US should invest in space-based weapons. Krepon argued that the US could open itself to new vulnerabilities by escalating military conflict in space, while Spring said the US needs to invest now so that it will have ready defenses in the case of an attack.

Krepon and other analysts say that the US shouldn't focus on high-tech space weapons because there are so many low-tech ways to knock out a satellite.

Chen fumbles Taiwanese history

On Wednesday President Chen Shui-bian issued an open letter to the armed forces marking the 60th anniversary of the end of the "war of resistance" against Japan. This egregiously offensive slap in the face by the president of Taiwan to the people of Taiwan cannot pass without condemnation.

The salient point about the 1937-45 war between China and Japan is that it was fought in a foreign country -- China -- and the Taiwanese, as colonial subjects of the Japanese Empire, were in fact on the other side. Their involvement in the war in China was limited due to there being no conscription in Taiwan until very late in the war. Most Taiwanese who served in the Japanese military did so in the Pacific theater, rather than China. As far as the Taiwanese are concerned, they won no victory in 1945.

That they were on the side of brutally militaristic Japan, albeit not voluntarily, is not something to be proud of. As a result, many Taiwanese have been willing to accept the rewriting of history by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime which occupied the country after 1945. In this revision, China fought Japan, Taiwan was part of China, and so Taiwan must have fought Japan too. This, of course, is nonsense. But unfortunately it is another example of the false consciousness and muddled sense of identification imbued in Taiwanese by half a century as the colonial subjects of the "Republic of China."

One of the problems with Taiwan's political changes over the last 15 years is that while it might have democratized, it has never successfully decolonized. Part of the problem is that few Taiwanese seem to understand their situation as a colonial one. They have been taught that the colonial yoke was lifted in 1945, and only the highly politically sophisticated can readily see that what happened in 1945 was that one colonial tutelage was replaced by another. Consequently the Democratic Progressive Party's status as a liberation movement has never been clearly defined, and is little understood even in the DPP itself -- except at the most rarefied levels of political discourse.

The result has been a pitiful lack of zeal to effect that change in consciousness that liberation movements usually seek to effect as quickly as possible. Out go the statues, the festivals, the historical and cultural icons of the colonial power, to be replaced with an alternative set belonging to the liberated domestic polity. In Taiwan this reshaping of the national consciousness has been patchy at best. Some good work has been done by the Ministry of Education, while the military, for example, has barely been dragged into the post-martial law age. Until last year the armed forces were still singing songs about "liberating the mainland."

The armed forces used to be the private army of the KMT and their "nationalization" is, DPP government officials say, a sensitive issue which must be done very gradually. Actually this is rubbish. All that was needed was a purge of officers who would not renounce political party membership and swear a new oath of allegiance to Taiwan. This would have weeded out the pro-China unificationists and the KMT party-army loyalists, and left Taiwan with an officer corps with far less questionable loyalties than it currently has.

But the military is is simply a mirror of the wider society; Taiwanese consciousness needs strengthening everywhere. Instead what we see is Chen doing exactly the opposite: buying into and reinforcing a view of history that is fundamentally detrimental to Taiwan.

After all, if the armed forces really beat the Japanese then they are China's soldiers, not Taiwan's -- in which case their loyalty has to be questioned. If they are really the armed forces of Taiwan, then the events of 60 years ago are irrelevant. Why can't Chen understand that?

Buy arms to maintain balance in the Strait

By Jeremy Lu

Immanuel Wallerstein, who put forward the theory of the "Modern World-System," wrote a piece a few years ago, maintaining that the reason that the world is leaning toward chaos is because of the disintegration of the military order of nations and the drift toward battles for hegemony.

Wallerstein predicted that the flames of such a conflict would gradually engulf the whole world.

However, academics will not necessarily agree with Wallerstein, and the "core nations" in his outline have never taken into account China in any regard.

Nevertheless,Wallerstein's take on "hegemonic war" was supported by the doubts recently expressed by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

When the US published a report on the military power of China, it emphasized the fact that military spending on the People's Liberation Army has grown at a double-digit rate annually. What has perplexed Rumsfeld is that since China is not facing a threat from any other country, why does it need to increase its investment in the military at such a rate?

In the post-Cold War era, competition between superpowers continues, and China, as a rising economic powerhouse, is preparing itself to become a key player in the international arena.

Wallerstein is probably not familiar with the conflict between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and how they excelled in using the offer of talks as a tactical maneuver in an ongoing conflict.

For the CCP, the spirit of the proletarian struggle has remained unchanged for over 70 years. Now, riding on the back of the internationalization of markets, their ambition for domination has extended to encompass the whole world.

The Western world should no longer view China from the traditional perspective of "containment." Taiwan and the rest of the Asian countries should also seek to fathom the motive behind China's intentions to expand itself militarily and to consolidate its nationalistic goals.

Some may be confused over why any country would sacrifice its economic and social achievements for a war in which there will certainly be considerable human and material costs.

Wallerstein, however, deemed the military issue as a "universal cultural issue," which is the struggle of cultures, nations and peoples, demonstrated through military might.

China is rising to steal the spotlight of the world among a host of super-economies.

Regrettably, what has been revolving in the minds of Western nations is only the containment of China and how to protect themselves from it, while in Taiwan the arms procurement package is still being obstructed by opposition parties in the legislature.

We should understand that the importance of such an arms procurement bill is to maintain the military balance across the Taiwan Strait and it should be viewed as an important platform for Taiwan to establish itself as a nation. Only when military order is maintained across the Taiwan Strait can Taiwan's consciousness, local culture, ideals and lifestyle be recognized.

The opposition parties have almost always deemed the arms deal to be an arms race that only squanders taxpayer money, but they have failed to understand that a democratic government is attempting to protect the nation from disintegrating.

Jeremy Lu is the editor-in-chief of Mine Magazine.