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What To Make Of Chinese Claim Never To Attack Taiwan?

Angelique van Engelen - 9/9/2005

The US reaction to any force rivalling its global position militarily or economically is to monitor it with watchful eyes and prepare for action rather matter of factly. China appears to be rather aware of this and has issued a report into its foreign policy ahead of the upcoming summit of the US and Chinese presidents George W. Bush and Hu Jintao in Washington. The summit was cancelled due to hurricane Katrina, but the Chinese rumblings are no less valid.

It was rather a surprise move, because the Chinese, despite all the assessments unleashed on its mysterious foreign policies, rarely give away their military strategy. If anything will drench US policymakers' notions of just what the focus of their China policy should be, some of it likely is that mistakes are easily made and assumptions about China's foreign aspirations might not all necessarily be correct. The plethora of reports about the country's stature in an international context reveals more than anything just how difficult it is to gain a clear insight into the Chinese foreign ministry's plan of action.

Yet given the sheer size of the country, the US-China experts that are behest with the annual task of filling in Congress members on the country's military might, will have had no difficulty finding information to fill page after page for all the last five years that they were mandated to write the wretched reports. Towering over all concerns that one could rationally dream up have always been the country's economic growth and its military spending.

A media report on the last annual Congressional report by the US weekly rightwing opinion paper the Weekly Standard points out that despite the many ways in which China is obstructing US interests abroad, all the reviewers had eyes for were the tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the mid air collission of an American EP-3 reconnaissance plane and a Chinese jet fighter off the island of Hainan. But even though the Taiwan issues gained some traction due to China's passage earlier this year of legislation prohibiting its secession, which has led to the US' making good on its promise to arm the country to the teeth, it is hardly likely that we'll soon see any fireworks here. A Reuters report ahead of next week's summit underlines this, quoting Zhang Yan, China's point man on arms control, as saying "(We) have solemnly promised that we will not use nuclear weapons first or threaten non-nuclear countries and regions with nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances."

Nevertheless, observers interpreted the Chinese report as a covert warning at Washington's address to stop meddling in Taiwan. The Chinese also tried to reassure Washington by saying they would simply never commit to a first-use of nuclear weapons and pledged not to engage in a nuclear arms race, despite Beijing's hell bent conviction that Taiwan is part of the People's Republic of China.

The US Bush administration is the first to have adopted an official policy to help Taiwan defend itself against any Chinese intervention. The legislation was approved in 2002 and forms the extension of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus that extends the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which requires the Pentagon to sell the island enough arms to defend itself. At the time, Beijing interpreted the move as hostile.

To anticipate that the US and China are on an unavoidable collision course might initially sound too gung ho fresh on the heels of the war on terror, but nevertheless armed conflict against the gigantic country is something not far off the minds of the policymakers in Washington. The historic precedent that's most abused to underpin the unquestioned belief that increased power globally equals expansionist tendencies and is therefore a danger, is of course the rise of both Japan and Germany prior to the Second World War and the generally believed underestimation by the US of the strength of the Soviet Union in 1945.

"What we can observe could hardly lead anyone to think that we should be so confident about China's intentions. After all, this is the country that now ranks third in the world in overall defense spending, and the one that has increased its military budget fastest over the past decade, with growth in military expenditures outpacing even China's own remarkable growth in GDP. General Pace had better hope his statement doesn't go down in history alongside George Tenet's now infamous, "It's a slam dunk, Mr. President.", the writers at the Weekly Standard say.

Meanwhile, the Chinese conduct their [foreign] policy rather through a set of rules that it erroneously deems beyond questioning but which are not necessarily focused on expanding beyond Tibet and Taiwan. Only last Thursday, the 40th anniversary of Tibet's "autonomy" was celebrated with a Beijing-directed military parade and singing and dancing in the streets. The Chinese describe their 1951 annexation of Tibet as the country's "peaceful liberation" and stardardly don't not refer to the armed uprising in 1959 during which the country's peaceful spiritual leader the Dalai Lama was exiled. China's current President Jintao even ran the country as a Communist Party secretary from 1988 to 1992 and proclaimed martial law there.

The writers at the Weekly Standard point out that when looking for issues that might reveal where the relationship between China and the US really ougth to have soured, the attention in the recent past has often waned. China's rather obnoxious behavior can be listed as follows: China exhibits a noncompliant stance with regards to its pledges to the World Trade Organization; it has barred Taiwan from becoming WTO member, which also impedes its progress in the United Nations; it also has in the past refused to use its leverage with North Korea in the nuclear negotiations; it has a dysmal human rights record considering the refugee conventions it has signed; it is actively involved in proliferation activities that undermine the international rules and in some cases even aids countries that run illegal operations; it mistreats Japan; it counteracts the US on issues concerning Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Burma.

Analysts limit any potential fireworks incited by China to at least well after the Olympic Games in 2008, but believe that the US is right that any future troubles in the area would most likely concern Taiwan's status. The main fear of US military strategists is that in the event of a confrontation, in which they would be involved, the Chinese might fight a lot nastier than the struggle the Middle East presented in recent years. They even say that compared to CENTCOM, the US Central Command in the Middle East, PACOM, the US' Asian central command, will likely have a way tougher call. This is because Chinese, rather than showing the low end of assymetric warfare that the terrorists have employed widely in their struggle, particularly in Iraq, would opt to fight the high end of such a disjointed strategy.

Robert D. Kaplan, a defense analyst quoted by China's Pekingduck online publication says that US has already started to position itself to be able to counter any such threats and the fact that PACOM is already of the caliber of a rapid reaction NATO force shows this, he believes. It appears that the US simply isn't waiting for the EU to come around in terms of military might and is also convinced that NATO's lifeblood has withered too much for it to be an acceptable source to countervail any Chinese threats.

"The ships and other naval equipment being built now by the Europeans are designed to slot into U.S. battle networks. And European nations, which today we conceive of as Atlantic forces, may develop global naval functions; already, for example, Swedish submarine units are helping to train Americans in the Pacific on how to hunt for diesel subs. The sea may be NATO's and Europe's best chance for a real military future", says Kaplan.

He speaks for many when he contends that the US is likely to still favor a development into a stronger NATO alliance rather than an independent course of action by the European Union. In this sense, Cold War realities is what many Yanks are yearning for again, out of considerations that strike many Europeans as rather too aggressive just yet. "For it to regain its political significance, NATO must become a military alliance that no one doubts is willing to fight and kill at a moment's notice. That was its reputation during the Cold War—and it was so well regarded by the Soviets that they never tested it", says Kaplan. The US drive to want to make NATO into a more agile force again is also inspired by the consideration that the Europeans might even side with China to balance out US influence.

Alas, the world has become a changed place with the onset of the Iraq war. It will be interesting to see whether the US will think it can afford to venture out on its own against Iran, on its way to ascertaining it sets out on the right track to counterbalance the ever growing power of China that will last for Decades if not centuries to come. The shine of maintaining superpower status is rather a troublesome business unless you come prepared. Or so it appears.