In dire straits - political effects of China's aggressive military displays towards Taiwan

National Review, April 8, 1996 by Robert A. Manning, James Przystup

IT IS a new twist in electoral strategy that even Dick Morris would have problems spinning. In the midst of Taiwan's presidential campaign, China test-fired nuclear-capable M-9 missiles within twenty miles of the Kaohsiung, the world's third-largest container port, and of the other major Taiwanese port, Keelung in the East China Sea. This was accompanied by the amassing of 150,000 troops and the staging of major live-fire exercises in the path of major shipping lanes. For good measure, Peking extended the exercises even after the elections. All this has been a desperate and futile effort to intimidate 14 million Taiwanese voters on the verge of giving birth to the first full democracy in four thousand years of Chinese civilization.

Despite the war fever surrounding Peking's reckless conduct, China's goal was mainly to narrow Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui's victory margin and to shape the course of his post-election diplomacy away from a drive for international recognition. In the second case, it was unnecessary. Lee would likely have been compelled by economic and political realities to move back toward dialogue with Peking without the bully-boy tactics. And in the first it was immensely counter-productive, causing resentment in Taiwan and chills throughout the Western Pacific.

Indeed, Peking's actions were so outrageous that even Bill Clinton found a spine China had not seen before. The Administration deployed not one but two full carrier task forces to the area around the Taiwan straits, the largest U.S. armada assembled in the Pacific since the Vietnam War. This just might be the first step on the long road back to restoring the credibility the Administration has systematically squandered in its inconstant and inept China policy.

How bad is it? So bad that even our closest and most loyal ally in the region, Australia, had all but written off the Administration's ability to deal with China effectively.

In an intelligence assessment last December -- leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald -- Canberra concluded that the Clinton Administration "appears incapable at present of developing and pursuing . . . policies which would promote effective management of the problem." The report pointed out that the tension between Peking, obsessed with nineteenth-century notions of sovereignty, and Taiwan, actively pushing for a greater international role, could provoke Chinese military action, plunging East Asia into crisis and jeopardizing America's alliances in the region.

Such high stakes "should impress upon the U.S. the need for an active policy of preventive diplomacy," but "Washington gives no confidence that it is able to devise and implement such a policy."

Dicey as the situation is between China and Taiwan, it is only one of a stream of explosive issues ranging from China's failure to honor agreements to protect American intellectual property on up to China's sales of missiles and nuclear technology to Iran and Pakistan.

It is not only Australia that is worried. The entire Asia - Pacific fears that the continued downward slide of U.S. - China relations jeopardizes the region's stability and prosperity. One measure of this concern is that, according to well-placed sources, Japan's new prime minister spent more than half of his first meeting with President Clinton last month in Santa Monica discussing China.

China's assertive posture not just in regard to Taiwan, but in the waters of the South and East China Seas, has again raised questions about China's future, particularly as China is becoming a major oil and food importer. If the U.S. is not viewed as a reliable counter-balance, then South Korea, Japan, and the members of the Association of Southeast Asian States (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand) will be compelled to rethink their respective national strategies. As a Singaporean diplomat told us before Taiwan heated up, "Inside the Beltway it is all a game of spin, but out here, we watch carefully what you say and do, and it seems to us that the U.S. is unable to conceive, much less execute, a coherent approach to China."

Thus, while Washington buzzes with talk of the New Containment, a more likely outcome is the marginalization of the U.S. in the region.

There is a growing obsession among our friends and allies with "security dialogues" -- talk shops designed to somehow enmesh China while keeping the U.S. anchored in the region. Even Australia last fall mysteriously announced a new security accord with Indonesia.

Similarly, South Korea has been moving quietly but unmistakably toward China as tensions between South Korea and the U.S. have mounted over dealings with North Korea. A visible expression of this was the unprecedented visit last October of China's President Jiang Zemin to South Korea. That meeting produced a rabidly anti-Japanese (and somewhat anti-U.S.) joint communique.

But the biggest concern is the impact of U.S. - China relations on the U.S. - Japan alliance. This bilateral security pact is the cornerstone of U.S. security policy in Asia and the linchpin of stability in the region. But over the past three years Japanese views have changed radically. Until the beginning of the 1990s, the Japanese thought their aid and investment, plus the U.S. - Japan security treaty, were enough to manage China. But as they have watched China's double-digit economic growth enter its second decade and seen Chinese nationalism and military assertiveness on the rise, they have begun to rethink their position.