NewsMax.com
Wednesday, March 21, 2001

As a prelude to meeting Thursday with the new American chief of state, Beijing's most-polished and Western-wise diplomat threatened dire consequences if the Bush-Cheney administration accedes to Taiwan's request to buy the latest in made-in-the-U.S.A. destroyers.

Pausing Tuesday in New York en route to Washington, to play to news-media executives, Qian put Bush on notice that the Chinese dictatorship is ready to resort to force to keep its breakaway island of Taiwan from being able – with United States help – to defend itself against attack from the mainland.

Qian's language was diplomatically oily, but militarily abrasive.

He said selling Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with missiles, guns, torpedoes and special Aegis radar that tracks 100 targets simultaneously would be a "grave violation" of then-President Ronald Reagan's 1982 agreement limiting U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

That agreement, Reagan had insisted, was good only so long as Beijing did not arm to the point that Taiwan was put in a position where it could not adequately defend itself against the communists, who remain determined to "reunite" the island with the mainland, by force is need be.

It is that balance of strength the Bush-Cheney administration will be considering in the next few weeks as it weighs what to do about honoring Taiwan's annual military-hardware shopping list.

The military status on both banks of the Taiwan Strait is not the only serious concern troubling China. There is the even-larger worry that Beijing has about what Bush's proposed missile-defense shield for the continental United States may do to China's own defensive, as well as offensive, missile plans.

That had to have been in the back of Qian's mind when he told the press in New York that sale of the Aegis-equipped destroyers to Taiwan "would change the essence of the issue from a peaceful approach to bring about reunification to a military approach."

The implication being that if reunification were beyond peaceful resolution – to Beijing's satisfaction, at least – then so would be the larger issues of intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles between China and the United States.

That is the leverage the Chinese are attempting to exert on the United States to block the adequate defense of Taiwan. Qian's mission from Beijing is to sniff out how it's working.

His almost-open threat in New York was the diplomatic equivalent of tossing one's hat into a room before entering – to gauge what the response might be.

It's understandable that China isn't certain what to expect from Bush, who has kept his China-Taiwan cards close to his vest.

Beijing has tried both sweet talk and bluster, combinations, switching from one to the other and back again. But Bush has remained the American sphinx.

Qian was sent over to get a better feel, up close and personal.

His next stop, before meeting in the Oval Office with the president Thursday, is to confer Wednesday in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Qian is probing a Bush foreign-affairs team that is not altogether of one mind. Powell and his State Department, historically tender toward China, is at odds with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Pentagon, much-more hawkish.

Qian also must try to factor in where Vice President Dick Cheney stands on destroyers for Taiwan. Then there is Bush's national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, whose phrasing is often reflected in the president's comments.

Not making Qian's mission any easier is a growing concern on Capitol Hill about China's increased military buildup.

His most-vexing puzzle of all, though, is where Bush stands on all this – and the president has exhibited increasingly a tendency to make it clear to his Cabinet and Congress that it is he who is calling the important shots.

Bush will have to decide, and fairly soon, whether to sell some less-effective military goods to Taiwan and nix the sale of the Aegis-equipped destroyers, yet to be built. If he does that, Beijing will be delighted, Taipei forlorn and conservative Republicans in Congress sore as boiled owls.

Yet it might give Bush more elbow room in which to negotiate with China over the bigger missile-defense picture, if indeed he sees anything negotiable there.

The opposite option – signing off on the destroyer sales – would in effect be calling Beijing's hand, and the result could be seriously deteriorated relations with China, at least for the immediate future.

There is yet a middle way, which some Bush advisers are holding out: Don't sell the destroyers to Taiwan, yet. But commission their construction now, monitor closely China's missile threat to Taiwan and, if it gets more serious, then sell the destroyers.

If the missile threat from the mainland doesn't escalate, the U.S. Navy could always use those destroyers.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

China / Taiwan

Bush Administration

Missile Defense