General Chen Bingde (陳炳德), chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), is highly unlikely to fully achieve the goal of ending US arms sales to Taiwan during his visit to the US this week, but could nevertheless make some headway, an analyst said.
Dean Cheng (成斌), a research fellow on Chinese political and security affairs at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, said in a paper published on Tuesday that Chen’s visit was “significant.”
In addition to ending arms sales to Taiwan, Cheng said Chen also wanted to end or reduce US air and naval surveillance operations off China’s coast and end sanctions on sales of advanced technology to Beijing.
“Perhaps the Chinese side is chasing impossible goals,” Cheng said. “Yet, one is left wondering why the [US] has still made no move to meet Taiwan’s legitimate defense needs — most notably by making available the new F-16C/D and F-16A/B upgrades they have expressed interest in.”
“One can only wonder whether Chen’s visit will further delay Taiwan arms sales to the detriment of Taipei’s security. If so, the Chinese will have achieved one real goal in exchange for promises of future meetings,” he said.
Chen and seven other PLA generals arrived in the US on Sunday and will stay for one week.
Aside from visits to Washington, Los Angeles and the Grand Canyon, the Chinese delegation will hold talks with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
It has been seven years since a US chairman of the Joint Chiefs met with his four-star Chinese counterpart.
The Washington Post has reported that the Pentagon was portraying the visit as a “breakthrough” in its attempts to resume military relations with China, which “Beijing angrily severed early last year” after US President Barack Obama announced a US$6 billion arms deal with Taiwan.
US military officials have told the Post they were not “kowtowing to the Chinese” and that their primary objective was to open basic lines of communication with the PLA.
Otherwise, they said, there was a risk that small security conflicts in the Pacific region could quickly “balloon into major crises.”
Insiders have told the Taipei Times that, for its part, China is making arms sales to Taiwan the central issue of the visit.
“When you see all the Chinese talking points — about mutual respect and benefits — they all come back to ‘Don’t sell arms to Taiwan.’ So in some ways, it’s nice and simple,” Cheng said.
Chen’s military position means that he ultimately has responsibility for the development of war plans and control of PLA operations in the event of war, Cheng said, adding that the US and China had very different views of the purpose of military-to-military contacts.
While the US side seeks to create rules and norms in order to make the two sides’ actions more predictable, the Chinese want to tackle strategic issues such as US relations with Taiwan.
“The US remains the strongest power in the Asia-Pacific region and it loses nothing by being willing to engage, but it should never sacrifice support for friends and allies or abandon its principles in deference to a robust US-China meeting schedule,” Cheng said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS