PRC's arms are aggressive: US admiral
　

STRAIT SHOOTER: Admiral Keating said Beijing is developing weapons systems that exceed what Washington feels could be defined as necessary for self-defense
　

By Charles Snyder
STAFF REPORTER IN WASHINGTON
Wednesday, Jan 30, 2008, Page 1
　

The top US military commander in Asia, Admiral Timothy Keating, on Monday described as "troublesome" China's developments of weapons intended to deny US forces access to areas such as the Taiwan Strait, saying that such weapons "exceed" Beijing's contention that its rapid military buildup program is only defensive.

Without mentioning the Strait, and phrasing his comments in a very careful and circumspect way, Keating talked about the People's Republic of China's (PRC) weapons aimed to deny US forces' access to "certain areas on the sea, in the air, or under the sea," a clear reference to Chinese advances in submarines, missiles, aircraft and warships.

Keating made his comments in response to questions by reporters after a speech on security in the Asia-Pacific region at an Asia Society luncheon in Washington.

Couching his remarks carefully in words that are "standardly public," but which he said are backed by secret intelligence, Keating complained that "China is developing, fielding and has in place weapons that could be characterized as having amongst, perhaps, other purposes, the ability to restrict movement in and around certain areas on the sea, in the air, or under the sea."

The question about such weaponry, Keating said, is "not just the fact that these weapons exist -- we know they exist -- it's why are they being fielded."

"The PRC says, `we only want to protect those things that are ours.' We find it troubling that the capabilities of some of these weapons systems would tend to exceed our own expectations for protecting those things that are `ours,'" he said.

Keating said that the Chinese leaders he met during a trip to China last May said that the military buildup was aimed only to protect what is "ours," and does not have any expansionist or aggressive purposes.

His comments echoed those of last summer's report by the Pentagon on China's military programs that found that a key aim of its military buildup was to deny the US the ability to come to Taipei's aid in case of Chinese military aggression against Taiwan.

Keating also issued a veiled warning to China not to repeat an incident that occurred in October 2006, when a Chinese Song-class diesel-powered attack submarine surfaced within 8km of the Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier and its task force in the Pacific, warning that such an encounter could result in armed conflict.

Asked by a Taiwanese reporter about Beijing's submarine development efforts, Keating said: "We watch carefully the development of tactics, techniques and procedures by countries in the region, including China."

"When a Chinese submarine surfaces within sight of a United States aircraft carrier ... situations could develop where if it's night and the weather is bad and there's an increased state of tension," Keating said.

"I'm not suggesting there will be, but if there is increased tension for whatever reason, and a submarine comes up close to your ship, you might begin to take actions which could lead to possibly some sort of circumstances," he said.

He used the incident to underscore his and the Pentagon's long held demand that China be more transparent about its military buildup and its intentions.

"If we understand intentions, not just that they are transparent," he said, "we are convinced that the likelihood of misunderstanding that could lead to confusion, that could lead to crisis, it could lead to conflict, we think the likelihood is much lower."

Discussing his trip to China earlier this month, in which Taiwan came up in all his meetings with top military and civilian officials, Keating said that in each of those meetings "the tone was less strident, less confrontational" than his first visit there as US Pacific commander.

He credited this to the fact that "they know us a little better, they've heard the homily, the sermon before."

"It helps us to be able to repeat with accuracy that the United States has had the same policy with respect to China and Taiwan since 1979. So the People's Republic of China, I believe, understands our position better today than they did 10 months ago," he said.

PLA rapidly expanding: US military specialist
　

THINKING BIG: Roy Kamphausen of the National Bureau of Asian Research said China was improving its forces to have a military befitting its international status
By Jenny W. Hsu
　

STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Jan 30, 2008, Page 3

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is making rapid strides in expanding its military capabilities to complement China's rising international status, with the additional benefit of acting as a deterrent to US forces coming to Taiwan's assistance during a cross-strait conflict, a US military specialist said yesterday during a teleconference from Tokyo.

The conference, entitled "The Rise of China's Military Power," was attended by several military analysts and hosted by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) in Taipei.

PUBLIC PRESSURE

Roy Kamphausen, vice president for political and security affairs at the National Bureau of Asian Research, said that the PLA's accelerating modernization in recent years did not indicate that Beijing was seeking to compete with the US military, but was in response to the need to have a military befitting the country's international status.

There is a general consensus that China is not a peer competitor of the US military, a situation that will remain for the foreseeable future, he said.

DELAYING US FORCES

He agreed that the PLA appears to have adopted a strategy of delaying the arrival of US forces in the Western Pacific, especially in a Taiwan conflict scenario.

Furthermore, he said, PLA equipment -- including quieter attack submarines and ballistic missiles with maneuverable warheads -- seemed to be aimed at denying US forces a presence in continental Asia for an extended period of time.

One of the panelists, Captain Chang Ching (張競), an instructor at the Naval Strategy Section of National Defense University's War College, said the PLA would be able to shake Taiwanese public confidence in the nation's defense capabilities if the PLA managed to humiliate the US in its effort to safeguard Taiwan.

Kamphausen said that a catastrophic defeat of US carrier forces in the Pacific was an unlikely scenario and that China must realize that the US would not simply back down after the first strike.

Kamphausen also said that if conflict were to break out, the PLA would most likely strike Taiwan, while simultaneously denying the US access to the region.

However, Beijing would need to seriously assess the repercussions of taking such action, Kamphausen said, adding that it would drastically alter the international situation.

TAIWAN'S ARMED FORCES

In addition, the panelists agreed that Taiwan's armed forces would inflict sizeable losses on any invading PLA force, even without US participation.

Taiwan's armed forces are increasingly capable in responding to PLA threats, Kamphausen said, adding that US observers had noted that the Taiwanese military had become increasingly sophisticated and made dramatic progress in the past seven or eight years.

As the minister of national defense had said, absent US participation, Taiwan would inevitably lose to the PLA, but it would inflict tremendous losses, he said.

It was unlikely China would launch a full-scale invasion to try to seize Taiwan because the losses would be catastrophic -- even without US participation, Kamphausen said, adding that the PLA training was focusing on fighting high-intensity wars of short duration.

This applied most specifically to Taiwan and maybe only to Taiwan, he said, while adding that this did not mean that war was inevitable.

But it demonstrates how seriously the Chinese leadership takes the Taiwan issue, he said.

Helping China hurt itself


Wednesday, Jan 30, 2008, Page 8

China's largest telecommunications company, China Mobile Communications Corp, dropped jaws in Davos, Switzerland, last week when its chief executive revealed the extent of its access to the personal details of its subscribers.

Wang Jianzhou (王建宙) delved into the subject of personal data while discussing tailoring ads to the consumer. Wang detailed the kind of information his company had on its users, then added that it handed this information to authorities upon request.

One delegate, US Representative Ed Markey, told Agence France-Presse after the session: "I have my eyebrows arched so high they're hitting the ceiling."

But there was very little newsworthy in Wang's statement to delegates at the World Economic Forum. Close surveillance of its population remains a staple of Beijing's style. With the advent of information technology, its ability to monitor dissidents has steadily improved over the last decade.

Nor should it come as a surprise that the country's largest telecoms operator, with more than 300 million users, would contribute to this surveillance. Observers have been warning for years about the complicity of the corporate world in Beijing's surveillance and the suppression of freedoms.

In fact, the only revelation at the forum session was Wang's statement stunning a room full of information technology (IT) and telecom experts and government representatives. What shocked them, however, was probably not the message so much as the nonchalance with which it was delivered.

Democratic countries have largely turned a blind eye as their IT firms profit from helping China develop the technology to monitor its population. Too little has been said, for example, about Canadian firm Nortel's operations in China. In a project funded by Beijing, the company has continued developing speech-recognition technology that it originally created for the FBI in the US, apparently to analyze tapped phone conversations.

US lawmakers in particular should be up to date on the abuse of IT since a series of congressional hearings were held last year at which Internet companies discussed their operations in China. At these hearings, it became clear that Yahoo, too, has helped Chinese police identify dissidents who use its Internet services.

But although it is clear that companies from democratic countries have helped censor Internet access in China, transferred surveillance technology to the authorities and helped track Beijing's critics, little has been done.

Western firms and governments are more interested in feigning shock and disapproval than recognizing their responsibilities. Attempts to flesh out the UN's Norms for Business -- which detail corporate responsibilities not to facilitate human rights abuses -- have stalled, largely because of US opposition.

Likewise, the US congressional hearings resulted in a lot of tongue-clicking, but little in the way of improving corporate accountability. Legislation such as the Global Online Freedom Bill, which would have barred US Internet firms from providing Chinese authorities with information to identify dissidents using the Web, failed to pass.

Meanwhile, many Western IT firms are still unwilling to disclose the details of their cooperation with Beijing or to take action to avoid future abuses. Observers have suggested relocating servers storing personal data of users outside China. But as the Chinese market expands, these firms are in no rush to make any move that could compromise their access to the market.

Until governments take steps to demand such measures, however, the democratic world will hardly have the credibility to bat an eyelid when a Chinese firm openly mentions its cooperation with police.

Counting by the numbers


Wednesday, Jan 30, 2008, Page 8

David Pendery's splenetic letter "Apportioning the blame" (Letters, Jan. 24, page 8) on the recent elections, like so many other pieces of analysis in the media, appears to consist of a melange of banal observations of Taiwan politics, inappropriate application of Western voter models and worst of all, an abundance of KMT [Chinese Nationalist Party] talking points. It lacks any real understanding of what happened on Jan 12.

Let's begin with simple numbers. In the 1998 legislative election, the total pan-blue vote exceeded 5.3 million votes. In 2001, it again exceeded 5.0 million. In 2004, 600,00 pan-blue voters stayed home and its votes plummeted to 4.5 million. This year, it once again reached over 5.0 million.

Similar figures for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are 2.9 million, 3.4 million, 3.4 million and 3.6 million.

Looking at the numbers, three things stand out. First, the anomaly that cries out for explanation is 2004, when 600,000 pan-blue votes went AWOL. Second, apparent DPP successes in 2001 and 2004 were because of the fact that the pan-blue vote was split between the KMT and the People First Party (PFP) in both elections. Third, the numbers suggest that the real key to KMT dominance in the recent legislative polls was the simple fact that it eliminated the PFP (and the New Party) and for the first time gathered the entire pan-blue legislative vote unto itself.

These developments, coupled with winner-take-all districts that were artfully gerrymandered in favor of the KMT, explain how the KMT obtained 80 percent of the seats with just 60 percent of the vote. There is no evidence, anywhere in these numbers, that voters switched to the KMT because they were sick of the DPP's ideological positions, because the economy was bad, or because the DPP was incompetent, as Pendery (and many others) have argued. Such claims are merely evidence-free KMT talking points.

Instead, the numbers shows the structural features of legislative election voting patterns -- the DPP reached all its potential voters in the legislative elections, a figure around 3.5 million, and the KMT swallowed the entire pan-blue legislative vote -- over 5 million. Were it not for the "reformed" districts, everyone would be talking about what a typical legislative election this was -- how much it resembled 1998 and 2001.

Why was the KMT so successful? Taiwanese voters value most not policy issues but personalized service. Legislators thus constantly show up at constituent weddings and funerals, and are regularly called on by voters to handle personal problems such as car accidents or criminal charges. Politicians also finance temple festivals, and other local social events.

In Taiwan, voters chose local candidates because they were successful in presenting themselves as candidates who would provide personal service, and bring home fat wads of cash from the central government, as any study of election signage outside Taipei would attest.

Naturally, the party with the best connections at the local level -- where 90 percent of local officials are KMT -- and with the most lucre -- the KMT outspent the DPP five to one -- will win such an election. Note that in such political systems, the effect of ideology at the local level is totally nullified. Nor do Taiwan voters care about "corruption" -- which, in such particularistic politics, is more or less the result of the legislator doing what he is supposed to do.

Finally, since all such politics is ruthlessly local, the dismal performance of the KMT-dominated legislature is also no factor at the local level.

A similar system of particularistic politics, fueled by flows of cash -- both licit and illicit -- from the central government, gave the Liberal Democratic Party 38 years of single-party rule in Japan. So long as voters care more about personalized bacon than about good public policy, there is little that a smaller party can do to win local elections. Two words thus sum up this election: permanent majority.

Michael Turton
Taichung