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.”
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