Joseph Wu, Hsu Szu-chien

Since the new US administration came to office, China has sent one high-level official after another to visit Washington. Of them all, Vice Premier Qian Qichen (錢其琛) received the most attention. Even though Qian had many missions to carry out during the visit, the media hype focused the task of preventing the sale of AEGIS warships to Taiwan as his main objective. The media has also painted arms sales to Taiwan as a factor creating regional instability. We believe an in-depth study into these biased views is necessary.

We can gain a more complete understanding of the issue if we try to look at the transition of power in the US from Beijing's point of view. During the US presidential campaign, China indicated both explicitly and indirectly that it hoped Democratic candidate Al Gore would win. But the result fell short of Beijing's expectations -- it was quite an embarrassment. After George W. Bush took office, he replaced the "pro-China faction" and the "Red" experts in the US national security and diplomatic establishments -- who used to bring China so much of the foreign policy limelight. Each and every one of Bush's appointments, from national security advisors, secretary of state and secretary of defense to the second-tier and third-tier policy-makers have made Beijing uncomfortable. Being China's top decision-maker on foreign policy, Qian has to shoulder the responsibility of getting to know the top US officials, explaining Beijing's stance to them, exchanging opinions with them, preventing misunderstandings and advertising Beijing's policy on Taiwan.

At the diplomatic level, Qian did achieve those goals. He met with the secretary of state and the president, and promoted Beijing's policies. Otherwise, however, Qian did not accomplish anything outstanding. Beijing had taken the initiative in proposing Qian's visit, but the US government had not been overly enthusiastic about playing along. No special arrangements were made for Qian. After the meetings, both sides said that they had candidly exchanged opinions and that the meetings had been constructive. But in diplomatic language, that simply means that each side was singing its own tune. It is possible that no consensus or concrete conclusions were reached at those meetings.

While Qian was meeting with the secretary of state and the president, reports in both the Taiwanese and international media were focusing on arms sales to Taiwan -- and on only one of the many items on the list, the AEGIS-equipped destroyers. But both US Secretarty of State Colin Powell and Bush said publicly that weapons sales to Taiwan would be conducted in accordance with US law (that's to say, the Taiwan Relations Act), and that the decisions would take Taiwan's defense needs into consideration. Two weeks before meeting with Qian, Powell even said publicly quite a few times that the US would not consult Beijing about weapons sales to Taiwan. His remarks reflect the Bush administration's "unilateralism" in handling international affairs. That was why Qian did not make the weapons sales his key issue during his meeting with Bush -- he did not want to act too smart and mess things up.

Qian's visit was also overshadowed by the publication of photos in the US media showing the deployment of Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan and the arrest of US-based scholar Gao Zhan (高瞻). That was why Qian kept a very low profile and adopted a very soft attitude during the meetings.