Taiwanese frigate captures Chinese
cadre By Jens Kastner
TAIPEI - In what amounted to yet another
spectacular chapter in the rapidly improving
relations between former arch-enemies mainland
China and Taiwan, a Chinese government official
last week for the first time ever boarded a
Taiwanese frigate to observe a massive joint
maritime search and rescue drill in the waters on
the Taiwan Strait between Xiamen, a mainland
China's coastal city, and Kinmen, a Taiwanese
offshore island.
While the gesture was not
short of symbolism and ostensibly paves the way
for cross-strait military cooperation, Taipei is
wary that it may irritate Washington.
In
the drill, dummy passengers dropped orange smoke
grenades into the water and were quickly pulled
out by rescue officers and
coast guards from Taiwan
and mainland China. China's Vice Transport
Minister Xu Zuyuan, accompanied by Taiwan's Coast
Guard Administration Vice Minister Cheng
Chang-hsiung, gave a thumbs up and smiled for the
cameras about as demonstratively as he could.
Onboard the frigate Tainan, Xu
observed the drill, which was inaugurated in 2010
in response to hugely increasing numbers of
passengers traveling across the Taiwan Strait by
boat, making him the first official of the
People's Republic of China (PRC) to have set foot
on a warship sailing under the command of the
Republic of China (ROC).
What put the
story's significance into perspective somewhat,
however, was a handful of details: the brand-new
frigate was delivered last year to the Taiwanese
Coast Guard, a civilian law enforcement agency, as
opposed to the ROC Navy. As it always goes when
Beijing and Taipei deal with each other, Xu and
Cheng did not participate in their official
capacities but in something semi-official.
In this case, they performed as the
"honorary chairmen" of Taiwan's Chinese Search and
Rescue Association and China's Association for
Shipping Across the Taiwan Strait respectively.
Furthermore, none of the ships, boats, helicopters
and staff taking part displayed national flags -
those were replaced with fantasy ones.
"The joint fire drill is a historic but
baby step toward confidence building between China
and Taiwan," said Vincent Wang, a professor of
political science at the University of Richmond.
"It will be interesting to see what the next
incremental step might be: a Taiwanese functional
official on a Chinese government vessel for
functional cooperation?"
Chances of the
two sides conducting any substantial military
cooperation is "very small in the foreseeable
future," according to Wang.
Wu Yu-shan,
director of the Institute of Political Science at
Taiwan's Academia Sinica, also said that while the
drill can safely be described as a historical
event, it will not lead to greater
military-to-military cooperation.
"Taiwan
is hyper cautious in not creating an impression of
cross-Strait military collaboration and alienating
the Americans," he said. "You can see that from
the government's attitude on the Diaoyu/Senkaku
issue."
Wu was referring to the Taiwanese
activists who last month sailed to the East China
Sea's disputed Diaoyu Islands, which are
controlled by the Japanese. The Taiwanese
activists carried out their mission under the
escort of the Taiwanese Coast guard, who later
engaged in a standoff with their Japanese
counterpart, creating the impression that Taipei
sides with Beijing against Japan and in turn the
US-Japanese security alliance.
Because the
activists "forgot" to bring the ROC flag but waved
the People's Republic of China one instead, Taipei
assessed that the situation was becoming
precarious, potentially affecting Taipei's ties
with Washington, Taiwan's sole security guarantor.
As an obvious measure to counter the damage,
Taiwanese officials have since made numerous
statements assuring that Taiwan under no
circumstance considers cooperating with China
against Japan or other any other country it has a
sovereignty dispute with.
From Beijing's
perspective, by contrast, the further Taiwan is
away from the US, the better. But a justification
for the American security commitment to the island
is obviously that the PRC and ROC are still at
war, and more than six decades after the end of
the Chinese Civil War, there's no such thing as a
military hotline, early warning measures, no
pre-notification of key military exercises, nor
the signing of codes of conduct for activities of
fighter jets and naval fleets.
By
promoting everything that smacks of military
cooperation, for example the recent maritime
drills, Beijing tries hard to create an image that
the US-Taiwanese security cooperation is
anachronistic, Taiwanese academics have pointed
out. According to this school of thought, if a
high-ranking Chinese official is seen by all
waving happily from a Taiwanese frigate - and even
it does not belong to the actual armed forces, it
gives Beijing a very concrete argument that the US
should stop acting up as Taiwan's protector.
But in the view of Taipei, the formula for
what's in store if China's and Taiwan's militaries
are perceived as getting along too brotherly can
hardly be seen as attractive: if the US begins to
doubt Taiwan deserves protection and subsequently
ceases arms sales, the island will impossibly get
what it wants at the cross-strait negotiation
tables.
Also Oliver Braeuner, a China and
security expert at the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, believes that Taiwanese
President Ma Ying-jeou's fear that it will affect
relations with the US prevents him from taking it
one step further from the recent joint maritime
drills.
"While the US leadership generally
supports President Ma's cross-strait policies,
there are concerns in the US about the potential
transfer of advanced military technologies to
China," Braeuner said. "This might lead some
members of the US Congress to reconsider their
support for arms sales to Taiwan. This is
definitely one of the reasons behind Ma's
reluctance to increase military-to-military
exchanges with China's People's Liberation Army."
Jens Kastner is a Taipei-based
journalist
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