The top US military commander for Asia said on Tuesday he was “cautiously optimistic” on forging a conflict-free path ahead with China, despite US concerns about Beijing’s rapid military buildup.
The assessment by Admiral Timothy Keating, head of the Hawaii-based US Pacific Command, came despite new US intelligence guidelines listing China and Russia as main challengers and warning that Beijing was ramping up cyber warfare.
Keating, who steps down next month, pointed to China’s resumption of military exchanges with the US and its landmark anti-piracy naval mission off Somalia, where it cooperated informally with US forces.
“All of which leads me to be cautiously optimistic about the way ahead with China and even more optimistic than that about the region in its entirety,” Keating said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Keating acknowledged that China was developing “some pretty good capability” in areas ranging from submarines to anti-satellite operations to cyber warfare. But he said tensions have eased markedly since just a few years ago.
“We want to draw the Chinese out, we want to ask them to manifest their intentions forward for a peaceful rise and harmonious integration,” Keating said.
But relations could face at least temporary hiccups, he cautioned, if US President Barack Obama’s administration agreed to Taiwan’s request to sell it advanced F-16 fighter jets.
China snapped military exchanges with the US for months after former president George W Bush’s administration in October proposed a US$6.5 billion arms package to Taiwan that did not include the F-16s.
Keating said there was a “fair likelihood” China would again cut off military exchanges in that event but noted that US policy was set by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. The law required Washington, which had switched its recognition to Beijing, to provide Taiwan defensive arms.
“I hope China doesn’t react that way. I hope that it will take a longer-term view that our country’s policy on Taiwan has been on the books since 1979,” Keating said.
The RAND Corporation, which focuses its research on national security issues, said in a recent study that while China would face serious challenges in conducting a land invasion of Taiwan, it was in an increasingly strong position in terms of air power.
With its increasing power in ballistic and cruise missiles, China is in a growing position to suppress air bases in Taiwan as well as those of the US on the nearby Japanese island of Okinawa, the study said.
But China and Taiwan have been improving relations since President Ma Ying-jeou’s election (馬英九) last year.
While Ma himself has appealed to the US for weapons, a senior US congressional aide said the easing tensions were reducing the sense of urgency on his request.
“I’m not hearing on Capitol Hill a groundswell of pressure on the Obama administration to do more on arms sales to Taiwan,” said Frank Jannuzi, the East Asia adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the majority Democratic Party.
But Congress, he said, needs to look in the long term.
“I think the key thing to understand about the Taiwan-China military balance is that no amount of arms sales to Taiwan is ever going to give Taiwan the capability to defeat China,” Jannuzi said. “The entire exercise is one of deterrence. It’s one of trying to ensure that the Taiwanese are a hard enough target that China is dissuaded from any adventurism.”
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
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