MIKEMUN

Analysis
China's Law On Taiwan Backfires
Anti-Secession Measure Hurts Efforts Abroad

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 24, 2005; Page A13

BEIJING, March 23 -- China has paid a price abroad for enacting its controversial anti-secession law, spoiling a strategy for relations with Taiwan, undercutting a drive to end Europe's arms embargo and reinforcing unease over the growth in Chinese military power.

Although the law did little more than codify long-standing policy, Taiwan and countries around the world have focused on the vow to use "non-peaceful means" to prevent Taiwanese independence. In the 10 days since the legislation passed, this focus has emphasized the image of a China willing to risk war across the Taiwan Strait, frustrating Chinese diplomatic efforts to depict the nation's rise as non-threatening.



Students in Chongqing, China, sign a banner to show their support for the anti-secession law. (China Newsphoto Via Reuters)

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In pushing forward with the law, President Hu Jintao and his government were weighing domestic considerations as well as foreign policy. Hu, who analysts say is still solidifying his power, was eager to be seen at home as a tough leader on the emotionally charged Taiwan issue. Work on the law began last fall, they noted, as Hu was taking over as military leader from former president Jiang Zemin.

Hu and other leaders have portrayed the new law as a needed check on Taiwan's independence activists -- including President Chen Shui-bian. Without the law to brake him, officials have said, Chen could take one step too many, producing a military conflict nobody wants.

When China began talking about the law last fall, the analysts recalled, Chen was announcing plans to make several changes regarded here as highly provocative. They included changing the name of state-owned enterprises to emphasize "Taiwan" instead of "Republic of China" and inserting the name "Taiwan" in official correspondence from the Foreign Ministry.

Against that background, the Chinese government professed surprise at the degree of negative international reaction to the law during meetings Sunday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to sources with knowledge of the talks. The State Department publicly criticized the law as unhelpful. While in Beijing, the sources said, Rice urged leaders to take conciliatory steps to improve the atmosphere soured by the new legislation.

President Bush and other U.S. leaders already were warning that China's fast-paced military modernization risked tipping the balance of power around Taiwan, putting the United States at greater peril if it intervened to defend the self-governing island. With the anti-secession law's threat of military force, those warnings gained urgency; they were repeated several times by Rice during her Asian tour.

Maintaining smooth relations with the United States has become a pillar of China's diplomacy. But the anti-secession law, by feeding the fears of those in Washington who see China as a military adversary, seemed to push relations in the opposite direction.

The threat of force undermined a similar campaign to portray China in neighboring Asian countries as a reliable neighbor whose peaceful rise is not to be feared. This effort, underway for several years, has gained wide acceptance, particularly in Southeast Asia, as China's booming economy and expanding trade give it greater influence in the region.

The image of a peacefully growing nation also was important in China's drive to gain a lifting of Europe's arms embargo. The Beijing government seemed to be on the verge of success despite U.S. opposition. But since the Taiwan law passed March 14, the atmosphere has changed: U.S. arguments have gained new force, and the consensus in Europe for lifting the ban has unraveled.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said Tuesday that there should be no connection between the new law and the European arms embargo. But in European capitals, the link was already made.

The new law also clouded what had been a period of improving atmospherics between China and Taiwan, putting off indefinitely several proposals for better airline and commercial links.

Since a setback in Dec. 11 legislative elections, Chen had played down his most confrontational plans, including the name change for state enterprises. China and Taiwan then agreed on direct charter flights for Chinese New Year visits last month, and China had proposed talks about more flights this spring.

A Taiwan specialist in Beijing who was involved in drafting the anti-secession law said Hu's government had concluded from the Dec. 11 election results that many Taiwanese, even those who may support independence, were tiring of Chen's confrontational style, fearful that it could lead to war. As a result, he said, the government decided to cultivate a friendly image on the island, proposing direct cargo flights to help Taiwan's businesses and increased fruit and vegetable imports to help Taiwanese farms.

But the anti-secession law was working its way through the bureaucracy.

Since its passage, Taiwan has halted action on the initiatives, which Chen qualified as "petty" in the face of what his Democratic Progressive Party called a trigger for war in the new law. Chen's group also has announced plans for a million-man march Saturday to dramatize Taiwanese anger at the law. Opinion polls on the island, meanwhile, indicate increased support for the president's views.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...module&sub=new

__________________
"They want to test our feelings.They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and their newspapers."

Protester

Confed999

Maybe people are different on that side of the globe, but their "check" would steel my will for independance.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

lwarmonger

A typical heavy handed attempt to make people cave. All it did was remind the Tawianese that they are becoming less and less Chinese, being seperated from the mainland.

Officer of Engineers

It's too damned easy to misread the Chinese


Taiwan Strait war scenario myths abound
2005-03-26 / Knight Ridder / By Monte R. Bullard
http://www.etaiwannews.com/Opinion/2...1111805839.htm

In mid-February, CIA Director Porter Goss said that "Beijing's military modernization and military buildup is tilting the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait."

That statement is accurate but misleading: Was he talking about a balance between China and Taiwan alone or China and Taiwan with U.S. support? In neither case is the current power balanced.

Without our support, China already has a preponderance of power over Taiwan.

And we have far more military capability than China, but it is generally agreed that U.S. forces could inflict destruction and prevent an invasion of Taiwan, but could not invade and occupy China.

It is the job of military planners to assume that China will use force, but the real issue involves China's politics, not military capability.

Reunification is written into China's 1982 constitution, and maintaining national sovereignty is considered a sacred mission by the People's Liberation Army's leaders.

So, while many analysts say Beijing would not use force because of rapidly developing economic interdependence with Taiwan, or because of possible global political and economic repercussions, they miss a key point.

China is not a monolith and top Chinese leaders who understand the economic and political value of avoiding conflict may not have the last word on this critical topic.

Many analysts assume that "use of force" would include some form of invasion by mainland troops - an assumption that appears in nearly all scenarios.

This assumption has been a key factor in the decision to sell U.S. arms to Taiwan and in contingency planning about when and how the United States might come to Taiwan's aid.

Two weaknesses in this assumption cause faulty analyses: one involves China's principal goal for the use of force and the other involves the likelihood of various strategic scenarios.

The first wrong assumption is that the PLA would attack Taiwan to occupy or punish it for moving too far toward independence.

More likely, Chinese military leaders would use military means to force Taiwan to the conference table for negotiations, not to occupy it.

That would allow China to take the moral high ground from the beginning, stating that all it wants is for Taiwan to negotiate over its future degree of autonomy. Such a goal would mitigate adverse world opinion.

Military possiblities

Having the goal of forcing Taiwan into negotiations, instead of invading Taiwan to occupy it, makes a huge difference in the types of military strategies involved and the kind of support required.

A goal of forcing Taiwan to the negotiations table means China can use an incremental strategy.

It would not begin with a "surprise-decapitation" attack, but with gradually escalating warnings. China's target audiences would not only be Taiwan's leaders, military and population, but world's leaders and global opinion as well.

China has already shown that it can influence opinions effectively in other countries.

Some experts think Taiwan could protect itself by hardening its military facilities, improving its air or anti-submarine defense capability or maintaining air superiority across the Strait. All this focuses on unlikely invasion scenarios.

PLA strategic plans for defeating Taiwan are far more sophisticated than simplistic invasion scenarios.

While the PLA does practice combined-force amphibious invasion exercises, it plans to rely on information warfare and political, economic and military pressures to cause Taiwan to negotiate.

PLA leaders know they can cause severe problems for Taiwan without attacking. Just announcing a potential attack would cause Taiwan's stock market to plummet, plus a flight of capital - as happened after the 1995-96 missile tests.

They believe that missile firings offshore plus an effective propaganda campaign and diplomatic/economic manipulation around the world could force Taiwan's leaders to the negotiations table. In their view, an amphibious invasion or even an extensive bombing attack is not necessary.

In sum, there is no balance of power now across the Taiwan Strait; China will not eschew the use of force but will not attack to conquer and occupy Taiwan. Nor will China necessarily be labeled by world opinion as the aggressor if there is a military confrontation.

U.S. planners must prepare for this type of warfare. And our response should be political and economic, not simply increased arms sales to Taiwan.

Monte L. Bullard served as U.S. Army attache to China and as liaison to Taiwan's military.

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Chimo

lwarmonger

However, this also ignores the amount of damage that Taiwan is capable of doing to China's economy as well. Currently, China's economic growth is greatly dependant upon exports, and they are far more integrated into the world economy than ever before. Taiwan has the capability to disrupt these exports if they so choose, as well as the vital oil imports from the Middle East and South China Sea that sustain Chinese economic development. It also must take into account that one of the biggest investors in China's economy (Japan), recently committed itself to the defense of Taiwan. Even assuming that Japan does not become involved, it would most likely damage relations between these two trading partners. I think that China's rulers are aware of the risks of this course of action, and as long as Taiwan maintains the ability to hurt China's economic growth severely as well, then the stalemate should continue.

It's kind of like an eagle threatening to drop a tortoise that has it's balls between it's teeth from great heights (sorry, just finished reading Terry Pratchet's Small Gods). The eagle can get it's meal, but it'll be singing soprano for the rest of it's life if it does.