“Part of the problem are the assumptions that underwrite assessments of the Chinese military,” Yoshihara told the Taipei Times on Tuesday. “In the 1990s, analysts tended to extrapolate how China's military-industrial complex will do in the early 21st century based on its performance in the 1960s and 1970s. Such linear projections, premised as they were on a qualitatively different kind of China, significantly skewed many of the forecasts.
“In this context, we need to learn more, not less, about China's military modernization. We need more data sets that can serve to challenge longstanding assumptions that are deeply ingrained in individuals and institutions,” he said. “Underestimation carries its own risks. If the US or Japan encounters a strategic technical surprise from China, then the risks of overreaction could substantially increase [and] overreaction might involve the kinds of worst-case scenario thinking that would not be conducive to stability.”
The American Institute in Taiwan on Tuesday refused to comment on the decision, saying it did not normally discuss intelligence and defense matters.
The reprioritization also comes at a time when the US has its hands full in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as with the North Koran and Iranian nuclear programs, all areas where assistance from China might be welcome.
Gary Schmitt, a US official during the Ronald Reagan administration and now director of advanced strategic studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said this wasn't the first time a US administration had sent political signals through a reassessment in the hope of securing China's cooperation elsewhere.
“At the time [in the 1980s], many in the [Reagan] administration believed that China would be a necessary asset for balancing against the Soviet Union. The thought was that by changing the priority given China for intelligence collection, we would be signaling them that we no longer saw them as an adversary,” he wrote on the Center for Defense Studies Web site.
“Ironically,” Schmitt wrote, “the effort made during the 1980s ... made more sense then than today ... given the fact that the US government is continually surprised by the military advances China is making, how little we really know about what the inner circle of the PRC [People's Republic of China] is thinking and, according to ... report after report by [US] counterintelligence officials, the avalanche of Chinese spying we are attempting to deal with. Downgrading the priority given the PRC as a target will certainly not make those gaps any easier to fill.”
Given the close relationship between US and Taiwanese intelligence and defense agencies, any downgrading of US collection on China could have serious repercussions for Taiwan's ability to monitor developments across the Taiwan Strait and defend itself, especially if intelligence-sharing agreements were undermined as a result.
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