A major new US study warns that while it is important to build mutual trust, China and Taiwan should not move prematurely to discuss military confidence-building measures (CBM) and should wait until both sides are fully prepared.
“Leaders in both mainland China and Taiwan realize that they face an important and historic opportunity to improve cross-strait relations and begin the process of resolving long-standing differences,” says the report, authored by Bonnie Glaser, an expert on Chinese foreign and security policy and a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
It adds: “More work is needed to increase political trust.”
The study says that Taipei and Beijing should take concrete steps to create conditions under which dialogue on military CBMs can be launched.
It was released as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged for the first time that US relations with China may be entering a rough period as a result of plans to sell arms to Taiwan and US President Barack Obama’s decision to meet the Dalai Lama.
Clinton told reporters on the plane as she launched a nine-day, three-nation, Asia-Pacific tour that the US and China had a “mature relationship” and that “it doesn’t go off the rails when we have differences of opinion.”
She said: “We will provide defensive arms for Taiwan. We have a difference of perspective on the role and ambitions of the Dalai Lama.”
Clinton is the highest-ranking member of the Obama administration to confirm that an arms sales package is in the works.
There is widespread speculation that it will be announced soon.
At a meeting to present the study, Glaser said that within China there was an assessment that its position in the world had grown and that the US was valuing the US-China relationship more and that this provided it with greater leverage over the US on issues involving Taiwan.
She said this was a “miscalculation” because ultimately the US had its own interests, not just US relations with China — “as important as those are” — but also credibility throughout the entire region and globally.
Michael Green, another Asia expert at CSIS, said it was all the more important to demonstrate now that the financial crisis had not changed the fundamentals and that arms sales to Taiwan would move forward.
Asked if the strident rhetoric from China condemning US arms sales to Taiwan would have any impact, Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum at CSIS, said the Chinese had painted themselves into a corner.
He said: “If we said we were going to sell a bow and arrow to Taiwan they would have the same harsh reaction — as if it were the end of the world.”
Cossa warned the Chinese to beware of “premature arrogance” and said they had become over confident.
Glaser’s study, Building Trust Across the Taiwan Strait: A Role for Military Confidence-building Measures, recommends, among other things, that China should continue to expand economic ties with Taiwan, remove any obstacles to Taiwan’s participation in international NGOs, and make “adjustments” in deployments of its missiles targeting Taiwan.
It says President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) should seek a broad domestic consensus across Taiwan’s political spectrum in favor of expanding ties with China and that cross-strait reconciliation should only proceed at a pace that is supported by the majority of Taiwanese.
The US, the study says, should avoid pressuring Taiwan to enter into discussions that the Taiwanese leadership deems premature and should also make clear its support in principle for cross-strait agreements that are reached by the “free and uncoerced choice of the people on both sides.”
Green said the US had a critical role in providing support and leverage for Taiwan’s position when it came to negotiating military CBMs.
“Beijing would be very satisfied with an outcome where some symbolic CBMs lead to a peace framework agreement that is predicated on an end to US arms sales to Taiwan or otherwise constraining Taiwan’s defense,” he said.
“The military imbalance is growing to Beijing’s advantage. In this environment there may be a temptation in Beijing to not push meaningful CBMs, but rather to watch Taiwan’s strategic military situation get more and more problematic and then use the CBM process to lock that vulnerability in with constraints on Taiwan’s readiness,” he said.
Cossa said that as Ma’s popularity has dropped, China’s perception that time was on its side and that it would leave some issues until Ma’s second term, had begun to fade.
He said: “No one in Beijing talks about Ma’s second term now. They talk about the need to consolidate what has been done.”
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and