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China-Taiwan arms race
quickens
By Stephen Blank
The
rising military tensions in and around Taiwan - and
recent Chinese military exercises to intimidate Taiwan
independence forces - have not been widely reported, but
there is no doubt that the arms race is heating up on
both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Western military
analysts see enormous and growing danger of military
pressure from China, if not direct coercion, even
conflict, in the strait.
Analysts do not rule
out the possibility that if provoked, or if it believes
it could lose Taiwan irrevocably, China would attack
what it considers its renegade province in order to
reunify it with the mainland.
Douglas Feith, US
under secretary for defense, meeting with Xiong
Guangkai, deputy chief of general staff of the People's
Liberation Army, on February 10-11 in Beijing, urged
China to reduce the nearly 500 missiles targeted at
Taiwan. Taipei considers these missiles a direct threat
and a provocation. On March 20 Taiwan voters will be
asked in a referendum whether the island should acquire
new defensive missiles systems if China refuses to
redirect its missiles. On the same day they will be
asked to choose a president, incumbent Chen Shui-bian
having staked his career on the "defensive" anti-missile
referendum.
Those Chinese missiles have been a
major precipitating factor in the current crisis.
On February 12, the US Knight-Ridder News
Service reported that China's arms acquisitions and
development are tipping the military balance in
Beijing's favor - thus heightening Pentagon concerns
about an attack against Taiwan.
It also reported
that Pentagon officials told Taiwan that by 2006 China
might be able to deter US counterattacks and
intervention and that more limited action might happen
sooner. According to these reports, China is adding not
only 75 short-range missiles against Taiwan each year
but also an inventory of amphibious carriers and light
tanks, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and a
network of surveillance satellites.
The purposes
of the missile deployments and the qualitative and
quantitative improvements to Chinese forces deployed
around Taiwan are clear. First, they are intended to
deter any US intervention on behalf of Taiwan by
threatening the United States with unacceptable losses
in such a war. Though many analysts assume that China is
not going to invade Taiwan because to do so would be
immensely counterproductive, others consider such
complacency to be misplaced.
China would
attack if sufficiently provoked
First, many
Chinese think the United States will not fight wars that
involve high casualties to its forces. Therefore the
issue is how many casualties China must suffer to occupy
the island, not whether an invasion is a sensible
policy.
Second, for China, the Taiwan issue is
so bound up with the legitimacy of the government that
any successful breakaway by Taiwan could lead to the
downfall of the Beijing regime. This contingency, or the
fear of it, could lead a Chinese government to fight,
even from a position of inferiority. And there should be
no illusions about China's reluctance to fight, because
its military doctrine clearly talks of winning wars
based on the inferior fighting the superior power. China
has demonstrated that before. Therefore China would
fight if sufficiently provoked.
The arms race,
however, goes beyond Beijing's annual addition of 50-75
short- and medium-range missiles on its south coast
opposite the "renegade" island to encompass its general
qualitative and quantitative military buildup - and
Taiwan's own response to acquire more advanced weapons
systems.
Beyond the missiles being deployed
against Taiwan, China is also qualitatively and
quantitatively augmenting its capabilities to strike at
Taiwan using the range of its conventional forces.
China is carrying out a major military reform by
reducing the numbers of its military but simultaneously
improving the quality of technology, weapons systems and
training. This is taking place at a time of publicly
announced increases in defense spending of about 18
percent a year. Given the well-known opacity of Chinese
figures and statistics, especially with regard to
defense, it is likely that this announced spending
reveals only the tip of a vast and growing iceberg of
military expenditure.
Because of this secrecy,
which is based not only on communist habits but also on
the received wisdom of Chinese military thinking, dating
back to Sun Zi (Sun Tzu), it is all but impossible to
gain an accurate or objective impression of China's real
capabilities.
Taiwan fears China could attack
in five to 10 years
While most US analysts say
the Chinese military is still afflicted with multiple
shortcomings and is not a major threat to the United
States or to other Asian countries, Taiwanese officials
clearly fear that within five to 10 years, the tide of
Chinese superiority will be such that China could well
attack Taiwan if Beijing decides the circumstances
warrant military action.
Nor is it only Taiwan
that is concerned.
China's military reforms also
clearly encompass planning for contingencies in Xinjiang
and Tibet to suppress separatism and dissent there and
to conduct operations in Central Asia with the
co-signers of the Shanghai Treaty that formed the
Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO). That treaty
represented the first time China ever promised to come
to another state's aid, except in the case of North
Korea. It was the first time since 1950 that China had
projected its military forces beyond its borders, in
bilateral exercises with Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia and
joint exercises with all the members of the SCO.
Another major issue regarding the Chinese
military buildup is its linkage with Russia. At China's
request, details about which Russian systems and
technologies are being acquired and the extent of
cooperation since 2000 have been highly classified. It
is known that there were joint talks on military
cooperation, strategy and preparedness training of
Chinese military personnel in Russian institutions, and
joint research projects on high-technology with military
applications - but not much more.
The systems
China purchased earlier - the Su-27 Flanker fighter, the
Sovremennyi destroyer with Sunburn anti-ship missiles,
the S-300 anti-aircraft missile and the Kilo-class
submarines - have been described in Jane's Intelligence
Review by a Chinese source as stopgap acquisitions, but
one can tell from Russian sources as well that China is
purchasing more technologies for production from Russia
than weapons systems.
The purpose of this is to
develop an indigenous capacity for producing advanced
weapons. Thus it is acquiring, according to most
estimates, US$2 billion worth annually from the Russian
defense industry, which is still desperate to sell to
someone lest it be forced to go out of business as a
result of the general Russian economic plague. Russian
experts are also talking about selling China even more
advanced systems to keep up with its demands and remain
technologically competitive.
China builds
arms with Russian tech
Meanwhile China has
utilized the technologies acquired from Russia to build
its own indigenous weapon systems: the new 052-class
air-defense destroyers now under construction, the J-10
fighter aircraft, and the Song-class submarines, two of
which have been completed, with the rest under
construction.
Despite China's well-known
difficulties coping with advanced systems and
integrating them, these programs bespeak its enormous
ambitions in all fields of military development,
including the nuclear arena. The fact that China now
also is receiving France's enthusiastic endorsement for
lifting the European Union's embargo on weapons sales -
an embargo that Washington wants preserved, in another
instance of Franco-American rivalry - also speaks
volumes for its extensive military plans. The embargo
was imposed after China's brutal suppression of peaceful
pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in June
1989.
Taiwan, for its part, has not been
inactive. It clearly has intensified cooperation with
the Pentagon, which is helping the island develop its
own "critical needs" in order to survive a Chinese
missile barrage before US forces can get there. It has
advised Taiwan to beef up its anti-submarine
capabilities and to create a command structure to
function in the event of missile attacks, since Taiwan's
anti-missile defenses are weak or non-existent.
Since Taiwan's leadership expects China to gain
qualitative superiority during this decade, it also is
turning increasingly to high-tech solutions, such as
improved command and control, communications, computers,
intelligence, space and reconnaissance capabilities
(C4ISR), increased bilateral contacts with US military
forces, acquisition of Patriot anti-missile missiles,
and greater access to US defensive systems.
However, it is not at all clear if this would
deter China or if US forces would be able to overcome
China's efforts to obtain both a local superiority in a
Taiwanese theater or prevent Beijing's winning a
first-strike attack against Taiwan - thus keeping any
future war there short.
China is not bluffing
and blustering
Within a few years, China might
well be able to challenge Taiwan - beyond the holding of
exercises and blustering during the current campaign for
a referendum and elections. The issue of missile
defenses in Asia generally and near Taiwan in particular
will increase in importance.
Despite the current
weight accorded the Middle East, terrorism and Iraq, the
China-Taiwan situation is an urgent issue that will not
go away. Moreover, it has enormous repercussions for
China and all Asia, as well as for the United States'
position in Asia.
China has been issuing
not-so-veiled threats to Taiwan as it prepares for its
elections and referendum on Chinese missiles. It would
be foolishly complacent to believe that Chinese
capabilities will not be more fully engaged against
Taiwan if China feels that it can win safely or if it
feels sufficiently provoked to do so. But if Taiwan
provokes China, it will most likely do so because of its
rising sense of fear and threat from the mainland - a
threat that China itself has generated.
This
international arms race, encouraged by Moscow and by
Washington, each in pursuit of their own perceived vital
interests, could soon get out of control and expand to
include not only conventional weapons but also
space-based systems and nuclear missiles, if not
defenses against those missiles.
This arms race,
focused on the Taiwan Strait in the short term, will
create regional ripples, if not waves, and it is the
last thing Asia needs now, in the near future, or ever.
Stephen Blank is an analyst of
international security affairs residing in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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