While few expected the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear crisis in Beijing last week to produce a breakthrough, the nuclear issue is nevertheless raising concerns that China is gaining influence in the region, possibly at the expense of Taiwan.
"China's influence over North Korea, though weakening by the day, is nevertheless undeniably significant," Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said.
Liao said China was trying to elevate its international status by cutting oil supplies to North Korea and bringing together the two Koreas, Russia, Japan and the US for talks on resolving the nuclear dispute on the Korean Peninsula.
This has made the US-China-Taiwan relationship more unpredictable, he said.
But reducing the danger posed by North Korea is not just a matter of maintaining peace in East Asia but also of eliminating the risks to the US' domestic security.
"It is very likely that nuclear weapons made in North Korea will end up in New York City," said Banning Garrett, director of Asia programs at the Atlantic Council.
During his presentation at an international conference hosted by Taiwan's Institute of Policy Research last week in Taipei, Garrett said that after Sept. 11, US national security strategy and foreign policy has become focused on fighting terrorism and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction rather than maintaining peace and stability.
China, in hosting the six-nation talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, appears to be addressing Washington's top priority.
"Some would view that such an increase of the PRC's significance would change the US-PRC relationship and thereby change how the US would handle the PRC-Taiwan relationship," Garrett said. "But the two are not linked."
Garrett said that China has its own interests in taking an active role in solving the North Korean nuclear crisis.
"One is its own motivation to continue its relations with US, the other is its growing awareness of its reliance on the global system. As the PRC becomes stronger, it is benefiting from the system and thus it has more at stake to lose should the system not be preserved," Garrett said.
"I don't think the PRC would expect any, or [US President George W.] Bush would give any, concession to the PRC over the cross-strait issue because of its ability to take an active role in the North Korean issue," Garrett said.
Yet Garrett's paper also said that "the overriding criteria for the United States in judging utility and value of other nations to United States' foreign policy and national security seems to have been capabilities a particular nation was willing to contribute to realizing American's objectives."
In response to concerns that improving US-China ties can only jeopardize Taiwan's security, Garrett said Beijing was increasingly finding its relationship with Washington too important to endanger.
"The strengthening of Sino-US relations, rather than increasing cross-strait tension or changes to the US' strategy towards Taiwan, enhances Taiwan's security as the PRC is aware that any crisis [with regard to] Taiwan would undermine its relationship with the US. Both the US and the PRC have a mutual understanding of cross-strait stability," he said.
For China, "cross strait stability" encompasses the idea that Taiwan should continue to exist under its current identity, albeit awkwardly, without recognition of it being a nation in its own right, although this may be unacceptable to pro-independence forces in Taiwan.
"What Taiwan has is a politically abstract problem," Garret said.
"Unlike the Israeli-Palestinian situation -- where every Israeli knows someone who was killed in a Palestinian bombing -- there is no bitter personal hatred from any Taiwanese person towards a Chinese person," he said.
In Garrett's view, China is evolving and therefore Taiwan does not need to hold a hostile political stance towards Beijing.
"No United States president is going to go to war on China if Taiwan declares independence out of the blue. It would not be a wise course to push the envelope on the issue of independence," Garrett said.
"We have a stable situation now. Taiwan is as secure as it has ever been. And I think the United States' administration will remain very concerned about the security of Taiwan and its democracy," he said.
However, Lai I-chung (
"The whole perspective should be: `Is democracy the solution or part of the problem?'" Lai said.
Using the example of the recent push to hold referendums, Lai said that Taiwan's democratic development and change of internal governance has already complicated the US' attitude toward Taiwan and the cross-strait issue.
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