In a move that could affect US arms sales to Taiwan, the Pentagon confirmed on Thursday that China had “clearly signaled their interest in resuming military-to-military discussions and we are right now exploring how best to do that.”
The US has been more than anxious to resume military-to-military contacts since they were broken off by China in February as a direct result of Washington approving a new arms sales package to Taiwan.
US Department of Defense Press Secretary Geoff Morrell strongly indicated that the contacts would restart before the end of this year, that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates would visit Beijing in the next three months and that Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) would visit Washington in January.
In view of these developments, it seems unlikely that a decision will be made anytime soon on Taipei’s request to buy 66 advanced F-16 fighter planes — desperately needed to boost Taiwan’s aging Air Force.
According to Washington-based China experts, if a decision were made to sell the fighter aircraft, Beijing would almost certainly again cancel military-to-military contacts and Hu’s state visit would also be abandoned.
Nor could a sale of the fighters be approved for quite some time after Hu’s visit, experts say, for fear that such a decision would be interpreted as an insult to the Chinese president.
However, a report released earlier this year by the US-Taiwan Business Council said: “With the last F-16s under contract slated to be delivered by the end of 2013, and given the 36-month manufacturing lead time, the production could be forced to close before a decision is made. The window for Taiwan to purchase new-built F-16s is closing rapidly.”
Lockheed Martin spokeswoman Laurie Quincy said at the time that in order for the F-16 production line to be kept open beyond 2013, the company would need “some intent by the US government” to sell the fighters to Taiwan by this December.
Council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers has said that if the US doesn’t decide whether to sell F-16s to Taiwan by early next year “that decision will be made for them as a function of the fact the F-16 production line will start to wind down.”
This has led to concern within Washington’s Taiwanese community that the administration of US President Barack Obama may bow to Chinese pressure and sacrifice the F-16 sales in order to keep US-China military-to-military contacts alive and save Hu’s visit.
Coincidentally, Richard Bush, a former director of the American Institute in Taiwan, has just published a paper that concludes Taiwan needs to strengthen its military deterrence and that the US should continue to sell arms to Taiwan to help build that deterrence.
“Increasing Taiwan’s sense of vulnerability will not win the hearts and minds of Taiwan’s people,” Bush wrote. “It betrays a lack of confidence in the good sense of Taiwan’s voters. China only hurts its cause by acting in ways that lead Taiwanese citizens to vote on the basis of their fears rather than their hopes.”
The decision to reopen US-China military contacts comes after three days of high-level talks in Beijing involving US National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers and US Deputy National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon. At one point, they met directly with Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶).
“What we are looking for is a resumption of productive, transparent, military-to-military engagement, so that we can both gain a better understanding of what our ambitions are, what our intentions are, when it comes to our military budgets, how we operate, where we operate and so forth,” Morrell said. “These kinds of exchanges are just very helpful in avoiding misunderstandings, miscalculations and so forth.”
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