China's military exercises aimed at US, Taiwan

The recent large-scale military exercise in northern China is meant to send a message to the US, Japan and Taiwan, reminding them of China's growing military strength, military strategists said yesterday.

"The Chinese exercise carries the message to the US, Japan and Taiwan that China has the capability to keep Taiwan under its influence through military means," said Colonel Tan Hsi-chun (談喜春), a lecturer at the National Defense University.

"The thinking behind the move is that the Chinese military leadership is worried that people in Taiwan are becoming less scared of China because Taiwan's military has been able to acquire and absorb quite a number of advanced weapons from abroad in recent years," Tan said.

"Chinese military leaders certainly do not want to see this sentiment grow stronger in Taiwan," Tan said. "They want to demonstrate through the recent large-scale military exercise that they are quite capable of over-powering Taiwan militarily," he said.

Tan made the remarks yesterday after he delivered a speech to the press on the military balance in the East and Southeast Asian regions.

The speech took place at the Taoyuan campus of the National Defense University.

Lieutenant General Chang Chien-chung (張建中), director of the university's army college, agreed with Tan, saying China's recent military exercise has certainly been held with a particular audience in mind.

"China wants its message to be understood by the US, Japan and Taiwan. But it does not wish to go too far," Jen said.

"That's why Chinese Premier Zhu Rongi (朱鎔基) visited Japan around the same time of the military exercise in northern China," Jen added.

"China still needs financial aid from Japan to promote its national development plans, such as the cultivation of the western interior. Its ultimate goal is first to become the super power in Asia and then a world power," he said.

He called attention to China's long-term plans to build a "blue-water" navy capable of projecting forces to anywhere within the "first island-chain" by 2010 and to the "second island-chain" by 2040.

The terms of first and second island-chains were brought forward in 1989 by China's then navy chief Liu Huaqing (劉華清) to describe the sphere of influence that China wants to achieve in the decades to come in the Pacific Ocean.

Liu is widely considered to be the father of China's naval modernization.

Countries or regions within the first island-chain include Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines and Brunei. The second island-chain extends to the east of Australia.

"China's intensive military build-up in recent years is certainly not targeted only at Taiwan. China's real target is the US," said National Defense University lecturer Colonel Jen Yi-ming (任宜民).

In his lecture, Colonel Tan also warned against the possibility that Japan might re-emerge as a military power, which he said is the worry of many countries in the region.

"Japan apparently wants to become a political power. In its move toward the goal, Japan must inevitably strengthen its military and economic power," Tan said.

"Japan is the world's second-largest military spender, after the US. Its neighboring countries sometimes wonder if Japan's military investment has been more than it actually needs for self-defense," he said.

"According to estimations by some Japanese scholars, Japan has the capability to produce strategic nuclear weapons within three to six months if it thinks it necessary," he added.