In July, the Chinese government reacted to Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's (
During the 1980s, Beijing began negotiating military-related confidence-building measures (CBMs) with its neighbors in order to reduce tensions, and to promote regional stability and economic development. Although there have not been any formal discussions between Beijing and Taipei about cross-strait military relations, there have been opportunities for direct and indirect interaction between the two militaries.
Military CBMs between the two sides cannot be carried out in a vacuum, and will most likely be implemented in conjunction with, or be subservient to, political and economic CBMs. Interviews about cross-strait military CBMs with military and civilian analysts from China and Taiwan have elicited the uniform reaction that there must be progress on political issues before there is any movement on military CBMs.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
However, with the resumption of the Koo-Wang talks (
In this essay, I will focus on just a few specific areas: the PLA's foreign military relations program, China's military-related CBMs with its neighbors, and recommendations for cross-strait military CBMs.
PRC Military-to-Military Relations
Since China's economic opening began in the late 1970s, the PLA has embarked on a campaign to improve its military relations with countries around the world.
China's military relations can be categorized into seven areas: military attaches; high-level exchanges; functional exchanges, including discussions on operations, logistics and training, ship visits, international conferences, educational exchanges, language training, and visiting fellow programs; technical cooperation and arms sales, including military assistance programs; arms control negotiations; and peacekeeping operations.
The PLA has been active in all of these areas, especially in the 1990s.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Beijing's desire to counter Soviet influence and the need to modernize its force led to a major change in the China's foreign military cooperation program.
As a result, the PRC began developing military contacts with West European nations and the United States.
At the same time, Beijing began moving away from support for communist movements in Southeast Asia and began establishing diplomatic relations with countries in the region. China also continued to have close military ties and to sell military hardware under generous terms to traditionally friendly states in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. These latter ties were a blend of countering Indian, Soviet, and ROC influence in these regions, as well as acquiring hard currency from arms sales.
China's foreign military relations program has increased dramatically during the 1990s, as Beijing has tried to reduce fears of a "China Threat" and to lessen tensions along the PRC's border in order to help promote economic development. In July 1998, China responded to calls for greater transparency on defense issues by publishing its first white paper on national defense.
The report stated that China has been active in developing an omni-directional and multi-level form of military diplomacy. The PLA has established military attached offices in almost 100 Chinese embassies abroad, and over 65 countries have set up their military attache offices in China, a 50 percent increase in military representation over the 1980s. The number of total military exchange visits in the 1990s nearly doubled the number of visits during the 1980s. Since 1980, senior PLA officers have led over 1,300 delegations to more than eighty countries.
The PLA has welcomed over 2,100 military delegations from five continents, of which more than half of the delegations were led by defense ministers, joint service commanders, chiefs of the general staff, and service commanders. Since 1991, the PLA has sent over 20,000 people in more than 800 specialized technical delegations overseas.
Over 2,000 military students from more than 70 Asian, African and Latin American countries have come to China to train.
One of the most visible signs of PLA military cooperation has been naval port calls abroad. From 1949 to 1979, the PLA Navy hosted nine foreign naval ships, but did not send any ships abroad. During the 1980s, China conducted only one ship visit covering three countries and hosted port calls from over 35 warships.
During the 1990s, however, the PLA Navy has sent ships to over 20 countries and hosted port calls from 17 countries. One of the most significant ship visits took place in early October 1999, when a Russian Pacific Fleet destroyer and missile cruiser visited Shanghai to mark China's 50th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of Russian-Chinese diplomatic relations.
During the visit, the two Russian vessels held what they called joint exercises with ships from China's East Sea Fleet, representing the first joint maneuvers between the two fleets.
High-Level Exchanges Promote CBMs
High-level visits to or from China by heads-of-state or ministers responsible for foreign affairs and defense have led to breakthroughs in establishing CBMs.
The most prominent examples of China's high-level diplomacy in Asia that have resulted in military-related CBMs have been with Russia, the Central Asian Republics, India, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
These discussions have resulted in programs for military exchanges and various border agreements, including the establishment of hotlines, border demarcation negotiations, prior notification and restriction of military maneuvers and troop movements along borders.
Russia and the Central Asian Republics
A review of the relationship between China and Russia provides an understanding of how two countries, whose history is forged in distrust, can move forward with their political and military relationship. Relations between the two countries did not begin to thaw until after Mao Zedong (
Although the situation took a downturn in 1978 and 1979 with Moscow's support for Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, China's incursion into Vietnam, and the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, both Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev began to reduce tensions.
Real progress did not take hold, however, until Brezhnev died in 1982 and Mikhail Gorbachev replaced him.
In order to implement broader military reforms, China reduced its troop strength from four million to three million troops between 1982 and 1986. In conjunction with this, the Central Military Commission (CMC) radically revised China's doctrine and strategic defense policy in 1985 by directing the armed forces to change from preparation for an early, major, and nuclear war with the Soviet Union to preparing for local limited wars around China's borders, including its maritime territories and claims.
By 1986, Gorbachev began to respond to these moves and to address China's three obstacles to improved relations: Soviet troops in Afghanistan; the buildup of Soviet forces along the Sino-Russian border; and the Soviet-backed Vietnamese military occupation of Cambodia.
In July 1986, Gorbachev opened the door to better relations with a speech at Vladivostok, saying the Soviet Union was prepared to enter into discussion with China at any time and at any level on the border dispute and on troop reductions along the border. In 1987, the Soviets began a five-year phased reduction of its 65,000 troops in Mongolia. In 1988, Gorbachev announced at the United Nations that Soviet conventional forces would unilaterally be reduced by 500,000. Of these, 120,000 would come from troops facing China, and the remaining troops in the Soviet Far East would progressively be reconfigured in a defensive mode.
Following Gorbachev's visit to China in May 1989, Soviet and Chinese officials began negotiations on reducing forces along the border. During Chinese Premier Li Peng's (李鵬) visit to Moscow in April 1990, an agreement was reached on governing principles regarding force reductions.
At the same time, bilateral military exchanges began in earnest, opening the door for the PRC to purchase billions of dollars worth of Russian arms. When President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) visited Moscow in 1994, he and President Boris Yeltsin concluded an agreement on detargeting their missiles against each other. In April 1996, the presidents of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan signed the agreement on Confidence-Building in the Military Field in the Border Area.
This agreement called for mutual non-use of force and renunciation of military superiority. It encouraged information exchanges on agreed components of military forces and boarder guard troops, restriction in the scale, geographic limits and the number of troop exercises, and notification of large-scale military activities.
The parties were encouraged to invite observers to troop exercises on a mutual basis and to strengthen friendly contact between military personnel. Once the border agreement was signed, the PLA's Shenyang Military Region (
By the second half of the 1990s, Beijing and Moscow began characterizing their relationship as a partnership.
As China continues to purchase more arms from Russia and more military delegations exchange visits, their relationship is expected to improve even more.
China-India Relations
China's relations with India continue to be shadowed by their border war in 1962, but border talks that began in 1981 led to the 1996 agreement on CBMs in the Military Field Along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
This agreement pledged each side not to attack each other or cross the border, to reduce troops along the common border, and to avoid holding large-scale military exercises and flying combat aircraft in close proximity of the border.
China-ASEAN Relations
In Southeast Asia, China has shifted from bilateral to multilateral CBMs through its participation in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). PLA representatives have participated in the meetings, and Beijing hosted one hundred participants at an ARF working group meeting on CBMs in 1997. China and Vietnam have also been working toward delineating the land border and the demarcation of the Gulf of Tonkin by the end of next year.
In addition, Beijing agreed in 1997 to disclose the number of land mines remaining on the border, and PLA troops have now cleared 42 mine fields of over 100,000 mines from the Chinese side of the border.
Recommendations
An analysis of China's military-related CBMs over the past decade lead to two conclusions that can be applied to cross-Strait military relations.
First, during the 1990s, Beijing has moved forward on military-related CBMs with most of its neighbors, but at different speeds, depending upon the political relationship. China's progress on military CBMs has followed breakthroughs surrounding high-level political visits, even though it has taken several years to work out details and begin implementing the military CBMs.
Second, it is unlikely there will be any significant progress toward military CBMs across the Taiwan Strait until there is movement on political issues. In spite of this, however, Beijing and Taipei have implemented some military-related CBMs, such as the communications hotline established for maritime rescue issues.
In addition, there have been meetings between the PLA and national security-related organizations in Taiwan, as well as unofficial contact between active duty PLA and ROC military officers in the US.
While these conclusions may seem pessimistic, several types of CBMs could be established in the future between the PLA and ROC military under the right set of circumstances. Although many of these CBMs would be symbolic in nature, they could eventually lead to substantive CBMs. A list of possible CBMs, without specifying any particular time frame, is as follows:
One of the most important, yet most difficult, measures involve declaratory statements concerning the use of force and Taiwan independence. Either side could break the logjam by making unilateral declarations. Beijing could renounce its policy to use force to reunify Taiwan with the mainland. Taipei could also renounce the possibility of declaring independence for Taiwan. The probability of either of these two situations occurring, however, is not high.
Beijing and Taipei could agree upon various transparency and constraint measures, including requirements to provide advance notice of certain levels of troop movements and exercises.
They could also agree to avoid holding large-scale military exercises involving more than an agreed-upon number of troops and vessels, and to refrain from flying combat aircraft within a specified area over the Taiwan Strait.
Once both sides have agreed upon various constraint measures, they would have to agree upon the necessary verification measures designed to confirm compliance with the agreement. These could include joint or third-party aerial inspections, ground-based electronic sensoring, and/or on-site inspections. While it appears that the near term probability of Beijing and Taipei establishing new military CBMs is not high, opportunities for military CBMs can grow over time.
For example, who could have predicted 20 years ago that China would have broad military relations with Russia today. Bold leadership, however, provided the impetus for this to happen.
Over the past decade, Taiwan has invested over US$40 billion on the mainland and informal discussions between SEF and ARATS have been established.
Bold leadership could yet be the decisive factor between Taiwan and the mainland.
Kenneth Allen is a senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, where he directs a project promoting confidence-building measures for China. He served in the US Air Force from 1971-1992, including assignments in the US Embassy's Defense Attache Office in Taipei (1975-1976) and Beijing (1987-1989).
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