During a flurry of high-level exchanges with the US, China has been hinting that US concessions over Taiwan may produce greater Chinese cooperation in the US-led war on terror and Iraq, analysts said yesterday.
While Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was in Beijing this week to rally support for the US stance on Iraq, he also discussed US arms sales to Taiwan with Chinese officials.
"The Taiwan issue is the most important, most sensitive issue facing the entirety of Sino-US relations," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Chinese negotiators as saying.
He urged the US to end weapons sales to Taiwan and "do more things that are beneficial to peaceful reunification" with Taiwan.
James Mulvenon, a China analyst at the influential Rand think tank in Washington, said Beijing was making a mistake if it believed it could wring concessions from Washington using the Taiwan issue.
"China is operating under the mistaken assumption that the war against terrorism and Iraq will get them something in return on Taiwan, that the US will make concessions on Taiwan. This won't happen," he said.
"The US is saying `we want a coalition against Iraq and we want a coalition against North Korea, but we will not budge on Taiwan,'" Mulvenon said.
Su Ge, vice president of the foreign ministry-run China Institute of International Studies, declined to say if Beijing was directly linking cooperation on Iraq with hopes for US concessions on Taiwan.
But he said recent improvements in the relationship made trade-offs a natural expectation.
"What China wants is a more business-like relationship with the United States on all issues, not just Taiwan," he said.
"China-US relations over the last year have reached a turning point, with relations moving toward a warming trend, before this it was very tense, but now the relations have gradually moved toward detente and consultation."
To solidify the gains, more confidence-building measures were needed, including this week's resumption of military-to-military ties agreed to during an October summit between US President George W. Bush and Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民), he said.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, China has generally supported US efforts to fight terrorism and supported last month's UN resolution on weapons inspections against Iraq.
But Mulvenon warned that the warming trend between Beijing and Washington was like "a series of bubbles of expectations" all of which could easily burst over an unexpected crisis.
He pointed to the collision between a US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet in April last year, which led to a rapid and dangerous deterioration in relations.
"We still have not seen a strategic shift, but instead a movement for more cooperation driven by a need for a united front against Iraq and North Korea," he said.
"I'm not totally convinced that if another crisis like the EP-3 or a crisis over Taiwan erupts, that this nascent strategic cooperation will continue to pan out."
The US, especially the Pentagon, would continue to view Beijing with suspicion as long as China continued deploying ballistic missiles along its southeastern coast facing Taiwan, he said.
The US has said China has deployed some 400 ballistic missiles within striking distance of Taiwan and is increasing that number by some 50 missiles per year.
Mulvenon said that, for the Bush administration to even consider reducing arm sales to Taiwan, Beijing would have to redeploy its missile force away from the Taiwan Strait.
Su said China was not expecting dramatic gestures from Washington on arms sales.
"We are not asking the US to stop the arms sales to Taiwan right here and now or even tomorrow, but we want to see the US return to its 1982 promise to gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan," Su said.
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