20041229

The Bush administration is not concerned at this time over two recent Chinese official actions that seemingly set the stage for a potential Chinese military attack against Taiwan, Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday.

"I don't see reason for immediate concern at the moment," Powell said in response to a question about China's planned "anti-secession law" and a new defense white paper that targeted Taiwan as the main focus of China's military modernization.

Powell was asked during a Washington press conference about the anti-secession law currently being discussed by China's National People's Congress and a white paper on China's military modernization issued over the weekend.

"I'm aware that there is modernization taking place in the Chinese armed forces," he said.

"We are monitoring that closely, and we are in conversations with our Chinese colleagues about it," he said.

"And so, I don't see reason for immediate concern at the moment. I think everybody realizes that this isn't the time to escalate tensions in the Strait. And we hope that will continue to be the case," he said.

"[The Chinese government] wants to avoid the image that China is always a military threat to its neighboring countries."

Powell also said the administration is "still committed to our `one China' policy."

Meanwhile, a ranking military official yesterday used the white paper to illustrate to the public the urgent need to move forward with the NT$610 billion special arms procurement budget.

"As far as we can see, China's defense white paper was basically drafted to outline their potential military strikes against Taiwan," said navy Captain Wang Shih-chien, deputy director of the Ministry of National Defense's military intelligence research and collection center. "As a result, it is necessary for us to be equipped with enough forces to defend ourselves."

Wang made the remarks during a weekly press conference at the ministry yesterday morning.

Wang said that according to the white paper, China is obviously trying to expand and improve the capabilities of its amphibious troops, air force and the Second Artillery Corps -- China's strategic missile forces.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has strengthened the abilities of its amphibious troops by equipping them with more state-of-the-art weapons and giving them in-depth training courses.

The Chinese air force is now able to launch a large-scale attack as far away as Guam from China directly. The coverage of its battlezone has been enlarged.

As for the Second Artillery Corps, the Chinese military has been developing and remodeling its guided missiles so that their accuracy will be improved.

"In the past year, China has increased its military budget 12 percent. However, as usual, the Chinese government hides the real budget figures so that the real growth of its military budget will be two or three times more than what we were told," Wang said.

"In the meantime, they [the Chinese government] want to avoid the image that the Chinese government is always a military threat to its neighboring countries. That is also one of the reasons why it never announces its actual military budget," he said.

"We shall trust each other and work together to remain peace in the area. But they [the Chinese] are not on the same track we are on now," Wang said.

The Chinese State Council's white paper on national defense, entitled China's National Defense in 2004, presents an unprecedented rise in threatening and provocative language, while at the same time condemning the US for selling arms to Taiwan. Meanwhile, Beijing continues to gradually expand its military in a display of strength -- proof that little has changed in the communist regime's warlike nature, which is a relic of the Cold War era.

China's military budget has seen double-digit growth over the past 10 years. Its total military expenditure is exceeded only by the US and Russia. Such military expansion has not only endangered the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait, but also poses a serious threat to the Asia-Pacific region.

Beijing claims that its defense policy is, well, defensive. But what Taiwan sees is the deployment of over 600 ballistic missiles, as well as around 730 fighter jets within striking range of Taiwan. China has also expanded deployment of missiles capable of attacking Japan, South Korea and many US military bases in Asia. Such comprehensive deployment is far from a "defensive" policy, and in the light of such obfuscation it can only be said that Beijing is not only trying to establish a hegemony in Asia, but is doing so with little opposition from other world powers.

After the Cultural Revolution finished wreaking havoc in China in the 1960s and 1970s, Asia and the rest of the world were delighted to see that this ancient country might be capable of rising from an ill-fated past. The economy began to really boom in 1990, when China maintained annual growth of more than 8 percent. However, with a population of nearly 1.3 billion, the country's average annual income remains a meager few hundred US dollars, which means that China can only consider itself a developing country. According to figures compiled by civil-rights activists, China still has hundreds of millions of people subsisting on very little income, and masses of unemployed and homeless people can be found in cities all over China.

The suffering of the Chinese people is profound, even as the government spends a large portion of the money generated from economic growth on developing and purchasing advanced weapons. What China's leadership craves is to become a hegemonic power in Asia. Under present circumstances, this is hardly consistent with the slogan "serve the people" which Beijing likes to throw around.

Taiwan's government and opposition should take careful note of the hardening of language China is using. When "peacefully promoting unification," this year's white paper calls for "preventing the forces of Taiwan independence from splitting the country." Taiwan is being forced into a corner by China's pressure, and the public must be determined to resist Beijing's threats of violence.

Taiwanese should not fear China's opposition, as stated in its white paper, to Taiwan independence, nor should they be intimidated by China's opposition to Taiwan's arms purchases or Taiwan's cooperation with other nations in military matters.

But at the same time, the international community cannot be allowed to ignore the terrible results that China's arms buildup may deliver. For if a conflict like this eventuates, its effects are likely to be felt throughout Asia and in every modern economy around the world.

Russia and China will carry out their first joint military maneuvers in the second half of next year, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said.

"For the first time in history, we have decided to hold large-scale military exercises with China," he said.

Ivanov said the joint exercises would involve Russia's strategic bombers and submarines and troop maneuvers in China.

"We will try to develop our cooperation with China through different sorts of military forces," he said.

The joint military exercises sparked fears that Russia and China could be paving the way for a military alliance. Those fears have been exacerbated by souring relations between the US and Russia over elections in Ukraine.

Russia and China, once traditional foes who fought a brief border war, have been working on a strategic alliance since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and have repeatedly expressed their desire for a multi-polar world free of US dominance.

But Russian defense analysts said the rapprochement was little threat to the West.

"Both Russia and China have a limited level of cooperation with the West, but these exercises don't necessarily mean these two countries are bent on forging an anti-West military alliance," said Alexander Golz, a defense analyst. "They are rather a sign of growing trust between both countries, and of Russia's desire to show China that it is not an opponent."

Ivan Safranchuk, an analyst with Moscow's center for defense information, said the main reason behind the maneuvers was that Russia and China had similar military equipment.

China is the world's biggest importer of Russian military equipment and has spent billions of dollars on Russian fighters, rockets, submarines and destroyers.

"Russia is much more likely to carry out joint military operations with Europe and the US than with China, which tends to be reluctant to enter military alliances of any kind," he said.

But he warned that Russia and China could use their military friendship to scare the West and promote their own interests.

In mid-December last year, China officially approved the amended Regulations on the Political Work of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), including the proposed "three warfares" -- psychological, media and legal warfare -- followed by related exercises for all armed services.

Among the three, the main legal concepts related to warfare, such as "legislation before resorting to war," were particularly mentioned. Beijing also emphasized the necessity to grasp the fundamental goals and principles, and basic warfare styles and methods of legal warfare, while strengthening military officers' education in international laws, the Law of Armed Conflicts, punishment for war crimes and other related laws.

When Chinese Premier Wen Jabao visited the UK in May, he at one point said that China would take the establishment of a national unification law into serious consideration. On Dec. 17, Hu Kangsheng , chairman of the Legislative Affairs Commission under the National People's Congress, gave a briefing on the draft of an anti-secession law. Meanwhile, Beijing launched its international propaganda work on the same day, as China's representative to the UN in Geneva Sha Zukang held a press conference to announce the purpose of the drawing up of the law. It is thus evident that China's Taiwan policy has already moved into legal and media warfare.

By naming the draft law the "anti-secession law" rather than the "national unification law" as it was previously called, or the "Taiwan basic law," it shows that Beijing is against national separation and Taiwan independence, but is not really in a hurry to unify with the country. The draft excludes both the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions, and targets independence forces not only in Taiwan, but also in Tibet and Xinjiang.

China's drafting of the proposed law is to establish a legal basis to stop independence and promote unification, while forming a force of restraint on Taiwan, internal forces within China, as well as other countries. Once the law is established, Beijing will inevitably reward those who support unification and punish those who go against it under the law, so as to accomplish its goal of "opposing independence and promoting unification."

As for cross-strait relations, the political and psychological impact of the law is much greater than the legal one. Since it is merely a domestic law, not an international one, it will substantially affect Taiwanese businesspeople operating in China, and the Chinese people themselves. It will also have a psychological effect on the Taiwanese people. By using the law to turn the "Taiwan issue" into an internal and legal issue, China is oppressing human rights in Taiwan. This will harm peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. Unfortunately, Taiwan's blue and green camps had a serious fight over the establishment of the Referendum Law earlier this year, and they are fighting each other, not Beijing, over the anti-secession law.

What China really wants is to use the law to deal with Taiwan, so as to resolve the internal problem of lacking a legal basis to do this, and its external problem of being unable to legally restrain both Taiwan and the US. The Chinese government has long wanted to make this law. Taiwan's political direction is not the most crucial factor, and the draft was not proposed simply due to pro-independence moves.

Beijing, however, still claims that it has been forced to make this decision to defend itself. What Beijing fails to examine is why must it have to gradually tighten its Taiwan policy if it is a successful one? The more Beijing tightens its policy, the more Taipei protests. This will lead to greater tension between the two sides, and is not constructive at all.

Ironically, if Beijing refrained from strengthening its forces, would Washington need to get involved in the cross-strait crisis? At the same time Beijing claims peaceful co-existence with all countries, it does not exclude the possibility of using force against its "compatriots." This clearly shows the real face of the hegemony during its so-called "peaceful rise."

Washington, which repeatedly criticized Taiwan over its "defensive referendum," should also criticize China's proposed anti-secession law, so as to maintain the balance between the two sides. Regretfully, the response of the administration of US President George W. Bush to this day remains soft. The US has merely reaffirmed objections to any changes in the Strait. This once again makes clear the danger of the Bush administration cooperating with Beijing to punish Taipei.

Lin Cheng-yi is the director of the Institute of European and American Studies at the Academia Sinica.