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Saturday, January 29, 2000

U.S. military resumes
China contact

By Richard Halloran
Special to the Star-Bulletin

IN the most visible signal yet that the United States and China are resuming the military contacts broken off last May, the U.S. naval battle group centered on the 97,000-ton aircraft carrier Stennis is scheduled to visit the Chinese port of Hong Kong in early February.

The timing is intriguing as it will come just before presidential elections in Taiwan on March 18. Four years ago, China fired missiles into the sea close to the island in an attempt to intimidate voters there. Beijing considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province while the majority of the people in Taipei in polls and interviews have shown that they prefer to remain politically separate from the mainland.

In 1996, the U.S. responded to the Chinese threat by sending two aircraft carriers to the waters east of Taiwan. The Chinese quietly backed down. More recently, senior officials in Beijing have become more strident in their demands that Taiwan come under Chinese sovereignty in the month since the former Portuguese colony of Macao reverted to Chinese control.

Moreover, Beijing has consistently declined to renounce the use of military force to capture Taiwan while the United States has insisted that the dispute between China and Taiwan be resolved peacefully by the two sides themselves.

The port call in Hong Kong will be the largest such visit since China halted military contacts with the United States after American bombers accidentally hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last May. In addition to the carrier, which is armed with 80 warplanes, the battle group includes two guided missile cruisers, two destroyers, a frigate, an ammunition and supply ship, and two submarines.

Just why Beijing approved the planned Stennis port call at this time, in response to a request from the U.S., was puzzling. Experienced China-watchers said the Chinese appeared eager to revive military exchanges because, said one, "They may not like us but they know they have to live with us." Beijing may also be trying to "play an American card" to persuade the United States to get Taiwan to be less aggressive in its stance toward China.

Chinese leaders have been enraged with President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan since last July when he declared that henceforth negotiations between Beijing and Taipei could be conducted only on a basis of equality in what he called "state-to-state relations." In the current presidential campaign, most candidates have supported that stance.

In addition to the port call, U.S. officials said, the commander of U.S. Pacific forces, Adm. Dennis Blair, is set to visit Beijing in February, which will be earlier than had been expected. The port call and the admiral's trip come after the visit this week to Washington of Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, a senior officer in the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

The officials said Xiong's meetings with U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen and top American military officers were more cordial than had been expected, although neither side changed its position on issues such as the future of Taiwan or U.S. plans to build an anti-missile defense system in the Western Pacific.

Xiong invited Cohen to visit China and the secretary accepted, suggesting that he would like to go sometime this year. Aides said later that Cohen would most likely go in April.

Before sailing for Hong Kong, the Stennis battle group has been operating in the sea between Japan and Korea with more publicity than usual, flying political leaders and journalists from Japan and South Korea out to the carrier to watch flight operations.

U.S. officials said those operations had two objectives: One was to caution the North Koreans not to miscalculate in their continuing confrontation with South Korea and U.S. forces in South Korea. The other was to reassure U.S. allies in South Korea and Japan that the United States has the will and capability to fulfill its security commitments in that region.

Officials declined to say which route the Stennis battle group would take as its sails south to Hong Kong. A track through the Taiwan Strait, which American warships have taken in the past, would remind China that the United States considers that an international waterway through which American ships have a right to pass. China claims the strait is an inland waterway.

For flight operations and training, however, naval officers would prefer a track east of Taiwan in the open Pacific as there would be much more room to maneuver. Aircraft carriers must turn into the wind and move at high speed to provide sufficient "wind over the bow" in launching and recovering aircraft.

One possibility would be both sending a cruiser or destroyer through the strait while the carrier and the rest of the battle group sailed through open sea.

The U.S. purposes of military exchanges with China, which were started several years ago by Adm. Joseph Prueher when he commanded U.S. forces in the Pacific, are two: to persuade the Chinese that the United States has not set out to contain China and to preclude Chinese miscalculation. Some Chinese strategists and political leaders have said privately that the United States will not fight to protect its interests in East Asia, or to help defend Taiwan.

Those purposes remain the same under Blair. He laid out that strategy to Congress last year, saying, "We're not sitting here planning to attack China. We're not sitting here planning to contain China." But, he added, the United States would protect its interests in Asia so the message was, "Don't mess with us."

Prueher, who is now U.S. ambassador to China, told the press in Beijing last week that revived military contacts will be a priority on his watch.

During the 1996 crisis, he said, "I didn't know anybody in China to talk to, and we had no military relationship. We need to have the ability to have that communication so we don't make any miscalculations and we can advise our civilian bosses better."

Richard Halloran, a former Asia correspondent for the
New York Times, is a freelance writer based in Honolulu.