Despite rumors of Chinese warships sighted off Taiwan's eastern coast on Thursday, defense officials yesterday said the situation in the Taiwan Strait was calm and stable for the moment and not as tense as suggested by media reports.
"The reported Chinese warships were probably our own ships. Everything is fine today as Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) takes office. Even across the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese troops have temporarily stopped their on-going drills," one official from the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday.
"But we can be sure of the cross-strait situation for only today. We do not know what it will be like over the next few days. It varies from day to day, from minute to minute," the official said.
Still, officials said, there has been no sign indicating that cross-strait relations may become frayed in the near future.
Although Chen does not face any immediate military threats from China, he will be required to make some quick decisions on matters which the army has had on hold pending the new president's final approval.
Chen must decide on, for instance, how the military is to conduct the planned Hankuang (
Hankuang is an annual joint-force exercise held since 1984, but scaled down several times over the past five years in what the government said were peace tokens to China. The exercise had been held for the past two years in the form of command posts maneuvering against each other, without involving deployments of troops.
The annual exercises have always been held with China as the imaginary enemy, simulating various ways that China might invade and what counter-measures Taiwan could employ.
Chen's decision on the Hankuang matter may have much to do with how China responds over the next few days to his inaugural address, the officials said, but the military leadership will try to persuade him to let them conduct the exercise in their own way.
Military leaders have expressed the hope that the exercise will be allowed to be carried out as planned, because it is the first time that newly-formed combined arms brigades of the army will be tested in the field against each other, the officials said.
The field tests are very important for the army, since without them, a further military build-up cannot proceed as scheduled.
The drills for the combined arms brigades and support units from the air force and navy are to include live-fire tests of weapons and maneuvering of brigades against each other.
The Chen government may conclude that the large-scale exercise could provoke a negative response from China as it has in the past, the officials said, but the army does not want to see the drills reduced to mere academic exercises as was the case for the past two years.
Another pressing matter for Chen is the appointment of suitable military officials to fill three or four top-ranking positions made vacant because of the change in government.
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