Reports of a newly-completed Chinese missile base opposite Taiwan and its purported threat are "much ado about nothing," military analysts in Taiwan said yesterday.
"The original report on the issue by the Washington Times and follow-up reports by the local press do not need to be taken seriously. The US government is obviously behind the matter," said Alex Shiung-po Kao (高雄柏), a military analyst and free-lance writer with the Defense Technology Monthly magazine.
Kao was responding to a barrage of recent reports initiated by the Washington Times, which said on Thursday that China has recently completed the deployment of a new M-11 short-range ballistic missile base in Fujian facing Taiwan across the Taiwan Strait.
"The US government wants to gain the greatest profits for itself through keeping the two sides of the Taiwan Strait in a hostile state. It does not make sense to publicize China's new deployment of M-class missiles. The M-class missiles are mobile. They will not stay in one place all the time," Kao said.
He empahsized other concerns.
"What we should worry about, rather, is China's deployment of cruise missiles in recent years. Last year, a cruise missile with a range of 600km was believed to have entered service with the Chinese military. A longer-range cruise missile, said to be able to hit targets 1,500km away, is very likely to become operational in years to come," Kao said.
"The 1,500km cruise missile can be fired from coastal Shanghai or inland provinces like Jiangxi. Should we be more worried about it?" he said.
"The US government does not need to find an excuse to justify its planned sales of high-tech weaponry to Taiwan. The new M-class missile deployment does not deserve so much press coverage even if it is true," Kao added.
Keven Cheng, the editor-in-chief of Defense International magazine, agreed with Kao that the media exposure of China's new M-class missile deployment is the work of US government.
"The US government obviously aims at gaining an upper hand not only in the upcoming arms talk with Taiwan but also in on-going negotiations with China over their plans to sell certain high-tech weapons to Taiwan," Cheng said.
"It is a sure-win situation for the US. The US can use the seemingly `tense' situation in the Taiwan Strait to justify its sale of certain high-tech weapons to Taiwan," he said.
"It can also choose not to sell those high-tech weapons to Taiwan in exchange for compromise from China over some issues," he said.
"In either case, the US is always the winner. It is more likely that the US will choose the latter. They look more interested in gaining some compromise from China than in angering China by selling highly sensitive weapons to Taiwan," he said.
"The bottom-line taken by China in the matter is that the US can not sell the missile defense system, known as theater missile defense (TMD), to Taiwan. They seem to be able to accept any other weapons of lesser significance," Cheng said.
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