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2 China's show of strength ups
military ante By Willy Lam
month: "Should Chen Shui-bian be
bold enough to concoct major events [in the
direction] of independence, we shall take drastic
measures to uphold national sovereignty and
territorial integrity at any cost."
The
two most powerful bodies in the polity - the
Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) and the CMC -
are filled with cadres and generals with
long-standing expertise on Taiwan. Three PSC
members have served as either governor or party
secretary of
Fujian, the "frontline
province" opposite Taiwan. They are Chairman of
the Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference Jia Qinglin, Secretary of the Central
Commission for Disciplinary Inspection He
Guoqiang, and fifth-generation rising star Xi
Jinping, the front-ranked secretary of the Central
Committee Secretariat.
The CMC is replete
with Taiwan Strait specialists. This include
Defense Minister designate General Liang Guanglie,
a veteran commander of war games off the Taiwan
coast; the newly promoted Chief of General Staff,
General Chen Bingde, a former commander of the
Nanjing Military Region; Air Force Commander
General Xu Qiliang, who was once based in Fujian;
and Naval Commander Admiral Wu Shengli, a former
vice-chief of the East Sea Fleet. Since becoming
CMC chief in late 2004, Hu has promoted a large
number of alumni of the Nanjing Military Region,
which has "jurisdiction" over the strait.
On a larger scale, last week's provocative
exercises tally with the overall pattern of power
projection that began early this year with the
destruction of an old weather satellite by
state-of-the-art PLA missiles. The feat, which
apparently signaled Beijing's readiness to join
the militarization of space, was followed by the
country's successful effort late last month to put
a Chinese-made satellite into the moon's orbit.
Moreover, the PLA has for the past year
deviated from its past practice of keeping newly
developed weapons under wraps. Semi-official
military websites regularly run stories and
pictures that showcase the prototypes or
just-completed versions of soon-to-be-deployed
hardware ranging from the Jin-class submarine -
which is capable of carrying nuclear-tipped cruise
missiles - to the nation's first aircraft carrier.
Apart from telling Taiwan independence
forces - and their sympathizers in the United
States and Japan - that Beijing has the
wherewithal to maintain national unity, Beijing is
flexing its military muscle in a fashion befitting
an emerging quasi-superpower. Referring to the
17th Congress, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
strategist Hong Yuan pointed out that "the
[defense] concerns of the new leadership and the
force projection of China's military have gone way
beyond the Taiwan Strait".
Hong sees the
coming five years as "a period of rapid
development in areas ranging from the PLA's
establishment, institutions and hardware to the
extent and means of force projection".
Moreover, the display of the country's
new-found achievements in weaponry and aeronautics
serves to strengthen internal cohesiveness, a
long-standing Communist Party goal. As Premier Wen
Jiabao put it on Monday while displaying China's
first close-up satellite pictures of the moon: the
feat is a "major manifestation of the increase in
our comprehensive national strength and the
ceaseless enhancement of our innovative ability".
Wen added, "[The project] will have a tremendous
significance toward boosting the cohesiveness of
the people."
Chinks in the Chinese armor,
however, have become apparent in the course of
Beijing's bold display of military prowess. The
latest war games have demonstrated poor
coordination among the Communist Party, government
and military departments. For example, it was not
until November 21 that the Chinese Ministry of
Foreign Affairs delivered its snub to the Kitty
Hawk (suggesting the delay may be the result of
policy discrepancy); however, the ministry
reversed itself a day later by saying that the
Chinese had now granted permission to the port
call for "humanitarian reasons".
This was
in apparent reference to the hundreds of the
crew's family members who had flown into Hong Kong
in anticipation of Thanksgiving festivities. The
battle group, however, was well on its way back to
its Japan home base, and there was no question of
it turning back to Hong Kong.
The Kitty
Hawk affair has cast a pall over seemingly
positive developments in US-Chinese military
relations. Most notably, there is the issue of
military transparency, which was raised by
Secretary Gates during his visit to China. The
military drills were not reported by any official
Chinese media. There are also indications that the
PLA did not alert relevant Chinese government
departments, let alone countries in the
Asia-Pacific region, of the maneuvers.
These developments may also cast a shadow
over the Chinese navy's first-ever port call in
Japan this week. The Shenzhen missile destroyer
will be in Japan for four days in what the two
countries hope will be a symbolic confirmation of
the thaw in bilateral ties.
The increasing
assertiveness of Hu and his generals, however,
could potentially stoke the "China threat" theory
in Japan, the United States, and Southeast Asian
countries that still have territorial disputes
with China.
Willy Wo-Lap Lam is
a senior fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He
has worked in senior editorial positions in
international media including Asiaweek news
magazine, South China Morning Post and the
Asia-Pacific Headquarters of CNN.
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