China's military advantage in the Taiwan Strait continues to grow, but the Legislative Yuan's decision last year to boost defense spending will help right the balance, the Pentagon said in its annual review of China's military released in Washington on Monday.
China has been able to improve its overall military capabilities and the capabilities of its forces facing Taiwan, and continues to build up its array of short-range ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, the report said.
But the document disagrees sharply with President Chen Shui-bian (
US military analysts now say that China has deployed between 990 and 1,070 missiles against Taiwan, up from the 875 to 975 it estimated in last year's report. China is increasing the number of missiles by more than 100 a year, it says.
But that is still far below the more than 1,300 missiles that Chen has cited in statements over the past year.
CONCERNS
In a press briefing accompanying the release of the report, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia, David Sedney, said the missile deployment is "clearly an issue that we're very concerned about and which we have raised very strongly and consistently at high levels over the years with the Chinese."
But he had praise for Taiwan for increasing defense spending in response to the growing Chinese threat.
"We were very pleased this year that Taiwan passed ... in December a 2008 budget which increased rather substantially the amount of money and the percentage of its resources that Taiwan will be spending in its own defense. And we think that's very important," Sedney said.
PROCUREMENT
He said a near-record number of planned US arms sales to Taiwan were announced last year.
Those included 12 P-3C anti-submarine aircraft and related items worth US$1.96 billion, state-of-the-art upgrades to Taiwan's Patriot 2 anti-missile batteries worth US$939 million, and several hundred AMRAAM and Maverick missiles for use with Taiwan's F-16 fighters worth US$421 million.
The report says the legislative action, the US arms sales commitments and recent steps the Taiwan military has taken to improve its operational capabilities "have, on the whole, reinforced Taiwan's natural defensive advantages in the face of Beijing's continuing military buildup."
"We've made a number of notifications ... about the weapons systems Taiwan will be acquiring and we think those will help address the issues of the balance in the Taiwan Straits [sic]," Sedney said.
"But that certainly won't address it completely because China continues both its modernization and its deployment of forces based on Taiwan ... and we continue to not just watch it carefully but to take all appropriate measures that we have to do to be prepared for any eventuality," he said.
Asked about figures in this and last year's reports that show an actual decline in the number of Chinese ground forces deployed in the Taiwan Strait area, as well as a sharp decline in the number of bombers and fighters within range of Taiwan, Sedney downplayed the changes.
"Those are things that can change very rapidly," he said. "The Chinese have a lot of resources throughout the country which they can deploy in the Taiwan Strait area and which they practice deploying on a regular basis."
"So if you're looking at the Taiwan Strait, we wouldn't look just at any one point in time. You know, we do look at what's based there. But it's important to remember there's even a larger number of assets there," he said.
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