Both countries were practicing gunboat diplomacy on a grand scale. Last week China held live-fire air and naval exercises in the Taiwan Strait and fired medium-range missiles into impact zones alarmingly close to the island’s coast. The Chinese made no secret of their purpose: to intimidate independence-minded Taiwanese voters. U.S. officials thought China’s next round of maneuvers, which will come within 11 miles of some small Taiwanese islands, would include such pointedly high-profile exercises as amphibious landings and parachute drops. Taiwanese newspapers even speculated nervously that China might attack the vulnerable offshore islet of Wuchiu.
So far, however, the result of all the bluster was a military standoff. The exercises showed that China still sorely lacks the air and naval power that would be needed for an invasion of Taiwan. And the United States still lacks a sure-fire defense against Chinese missiles, which could severely punish Taiwan, if not subdue it. Politically, another stalemate was achieved. Although the Taiwanese anxiously stocked up on U.S. dollars and gold bars and put their children through air-raid drills, they didn’t give in to Chinese bullying. If anything, President Lee Teng-hui–demonized by Beijing as a “secret splitter” – appeared to be gaining strength as this Saturday’s election neared. “We are not shrimps with soft legs,” Lee boasted.
Beijing’s heavy-handedness may have worked against its own interests by encouraging pro-independence forces. Lee, a native-born Taiwanese, has tried to raise the island’s international profile, but he adheres to the “one China” principle, under which Taiwan eventually will reunite with the mainland. The United States also endorses the one-China principle, which opposes the use of force to achieve unification. Washington says a Chinese invasion would threaten U.S. interests and carry “grave consequences,” but it never specifies how it would respond, a stance that has come to be known as “strategic ambiguity.” The Clinton administration resents the label. It’s “like the Energizer bunny–it keeps going and going,” Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord complained last week.
“The strategy is clear,” insists a senior Pentagon official. “It’s our tactics in any given contingency that we prefer to keep ambiguous.” Now that China is ratcheting up the military pressure on Taiwan, Washington is more committed than ever to improving the island’s defenses. A sale of 150 F-16 fighter planes is already in the works, with the first deliveries expected by the middle of next year. The Pentagon also wants to equip Taiwan with a reliable missile defense. But the latest model of the Patriot missile isn’t much use against China’s M-9 missile, and better weapons won’t be available until the end of the decade.
With a presidential election coming up and a Republican Congress demanding support for Taiwan, the administration may have to hang even tougher than it wants to. Last week the House International Relations Committee passed a nonbinding resolution calling on the administration to help defend Taiwan against an attack by the mainland. If Lee wins the election, Republican politicians may attend his Inauguration in force. “I know 150 people from the Hill who want to go,” said a Republican expert on Asia. “We hope [Bob] Dole will be among them.”
If there is a positive side to the face-off in the Taiwan Strait, it could be that Washington and Beijing now understand each other a little better. “We’ve both shown our cards,” says a senior State Department official. “They had to show that they were really, really serious about Taiwanese independence, that at the end of the day they would use force if Taiwan actually went for independence. We had to show that there were limits to what we would tolerate.” But after years of lip service to the one-China principle, it’s becoming harder to ignore the truth: there are two Chinas, at least for now, and they are not a comfortable couple.
