Since the new US administration came to office, China has sent one high-level official after another to visit Washington. Of them all, Vice Premier Qian Qichen (
We can gain a more complete understanding of the issue if we try to look at the transition of power in the US from Beijing's point of view. During the US presidential campaign, China indicated both explicitly and indirectly that it hoped Democratic candidate Al Gore would win. But the result fell short of Beijing's expectations -- it was quite an embarrassment. After George W. Bush took office, he replaced the "pro-China faction" and the "Red" experts in the US national security and diplomatic establishments -- who used to bring China so much of the foreign policy limelight. Each and every one of Bush's appointments, from national security advisors, secretary of state and secretary of defense to the second-tier and third-tier policy-makers have made Beijing uncomfortable. Being China's top decision-maker on foreign policy, Qian has to shoulder the responsibility of getting to know the top US officials, explaining Beijing's stance to them, exchanging opinions with them, preventing misunderstandings and advertising Beijing's policy on Taiwan.
At the diplomatic level, Qian did achieve those goals. He met with the secretary of state and the president, and promoted Beijing's policies. Otherwise, however, Qian did not accomplish anything outstanding. Beijing had taken the initiative in proposing Qian's visit, but the US government had not been overly enthusiastic about playing along. No special arrangements were made for Qian. After the meetings, both sides said that they had candidly exchanged opinions and that the meetings had been constructive. But in diplomatic language, that simply means that each side was singing its own tune. It is possible that no consensus or concrete conclusions were reached at those meetings.
While Qian was meeting with the secretary of state and the president, reports in both the Taiwanese and international media were focusing on arms sales to Taiwan -- and on only one of the many items on the list, the AEGIS-equipped destroyers. But both US Secretarty of State Colin Powell and Bush said publicly that weapons sales to Taiwan would be conducted in accordance with US law (that's to say, the Taiwan Relations Act), and that the decisions would take Taiwan's defense needs into consideration. Two weeks before meeting with Qian, Powell even said publicly quite a few times that the US would not consult Beijing about weapons sales to Taiwan. His remarks reflect the Bush administration's "unilateralism" in handling international affairs. That was why Qian did not make the weapons sales his key issue during his meeting with Bush -- he did not want to act too smart and mess things up.
Qian's visit was also overshadowed by the publication of photos in the US media showing the deployment of Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan and the arrest of US-based scholar Gao Zhan (
In fact, the US and China have had long-standing disagreements over weapons sales to Taiwan, human rights, trade, missile and nuclear weapons exports, and mutual trust mechanisms in the military sphere. New issues have been added to this list recently -- the dramatic increase in China's military budget, the Theater Missile Defense and National Missile Defense (NMD) systems, and so on.
The sale of weapons to Taiwan is an issue on which the US can control all the bargaining chips and pressure Beijing. The issue is linked to the questions of whether Beijing can accept the NMD and whether it will exercise restraint in missile deployments against Taiwan.
In fact, the people of Taiwan should not worry too much about the weapons sales because China's missile deployments are the real cause of the problem. As long as this threat exists, the US government has the obligation to provide Taiwan with the weapons systems it needs to deal with it.
In essence, we do not believe the arms sales talks in late April will result in a falling-out. Taiwan will not be a loser even if it does not secure the AEGIS sales. First of all, not getting the ships this year does not mean Taiwan won't get them next year.
Taiwan also has other alternatives, such as leasing the ships, or obtaining a smaller number of them first. Basically put, there is no single, simple answer to whether or not Taiwan will secure the AEGIS sales. Nor is any particular answer a fatal blow to Taiwan's security. For Beijing, the US-Taiwan military links implicit in any AEGIS deal have far more political than military significance.
But the development of US-Taiwan military relations cannot be judged from one single item on Taiwan's shopping list. For Taiwan, countermeasures against China's missile threat are not the only way out, and AEGIS is not the only way to counter the missile threat. In fact, a nationwide panic over the prospects of obtaining the ships could pose the greatest threat to national security.
Joseph Wu is deputy director of the Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University. Hsu Szu-chien is an associate research fellow at the institute.
Translated by Francis Huang
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