Jun 29, 2010

http://atimes.com/atimes/China/LF29Ad01.html

TAIPEI - During recent testimony in the United States Congress by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a US senator stated that China had offered to redeploy its missiles targeting Taiwan. According to the senator, attached to the withdrawal of 1,500 missiles is a weighty condition: Beijing demands the scrapping of plans to sell US$6.4 billion in American weapons to the island that China regards as a renegade province.

Although the US denies the existence of such an offer, a closer look at the senator in question makes her claim plausible that she functions as a conduit to Washington for China's leaders.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, is a remarkable person. Throughout her career, the 77-year old California Democrat has been the "first" many times: the first female president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, San Francisco's first female mayor, the first woman to serve in the senate from California, first to chair the Senate Rules Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee and the first woman to have presided over a US presidential inauguration. Furthermore, Feinstein was also the first American to see Chairman Mao Zedong's bedroom and swimming pool.

Among all those honors it's the latter that is of particular relevance. No US politician is believed to enjoy ties to China's previous and present-day leaderships as close as Feinstein. During 30 years of frequent visits to Beijing, Feinstein developed friendships with Chinese officials as high-ranking as former president Jiang Zemin, former premier Zhu Rongji and Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai - now arguably a rising political star in the country.

Controversially, on most of her trips to China, Feinstein has been accompanied by her investment-banker husband Richard Blum, to whom Feinstein has been married since 1980. Blum has been reported by US media as having extensive business interests with China. Feinstein is often described as one of the most powerful women in US politics.

Earlier this month, Feinstein visited China and Taiwan and held talks with both sides' top leaders. On first look, Feinstein has done what one might expect of a high-ranking US Democrat visiting the region: she called on Beijing to "step up" on North Korea over its nuclear program, to adjust the yuan and to sign onto a cyber-security pact.

Apart from this, the strong proponent of closer US-China ties held a speech on the 21st anniversary of the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Feinstein commented on the bloody protests in a way that strongly implied that she plays the role of being Beijing's mouthpiece.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published June 6, the senator sought to explain the killing of hundreds of reportedly unarmed demonstrators by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) into relations in a way that put the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) leaders of that era into a favorable light. "It just so happens I was here after that and talked to Jiang Zemin and learned that at the time China had no local police. It was just the PLA. And no local police that had crowd control. So, hence the tanks."

This wasn't the first time Feinstein had outraged China's dissidents and international human-rights activists. In the past, the California Democrat demanded the creation of a commission that would study the evolution of human rights in both the US and China. The panel "would point out the success and failures [of] both Tiananmen Square and Kent State", referring the incident in which four students were killed by Ohio National Guard gunfire during a 1970 anti-war demonstration.

It seems plausible that Beijing has long been recognizing Feinstein's pro-China commitment and therefore chooses her rather than any other US politician to function as a conduit to Washington. Apparently, Feinstein's task is the passing on of subtle signals on matters considered too sensitive to be openly dealt with through official channels.

The most sensitive issues that have been upsetting US-China relations for decades are US-arms sales to Taiwan and China's missiles targeting Taiwan.

Earlier this year, US President Barack Obama announced arms sales worth more than $6 billion to Taipei, a move that in Beijing's eyes emboldens Taiwanese pro-independence advocates. Although Taiwan's current Kuomintang (KMT) government is bringing Taiwan rapidly onto the path of cross-strait reconciliation, it is far from certain that the incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou will be reelected in the 2012 presidential polls.

Apart from Taiwanese independence, China also fears that in future conflicts with the US a well-armed Taiwan could function as the very "unsinkable aircraft carrier" that US General Douglas MacArthur had characterized the island in World War II for its strategic location.

Although the US has defended past arms sale to Taiwan with reference to its obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which states that the US must "provide Taiwan with arms of defensive character", Washington's genuine strategic interest in Taiwan, however, is related to the realization that the power that holds control over Taiwan can relatively easily block China's "sea lines of communication".

These routes are crucial to China's growth since 90% of China's foreign trade, including its crude oil supply, relies on them. The calculation is simple: if China's sea lines are blocked, growth rates will decline, if growth rates decline, the CCP's one-party rule will be endangered.

Thus, it didn't come as a surprise when a furious China snubbed US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on his recent Asia trip in retaliation to the announcement of Obama's Taiwan arms deal.

Unexpectedly, the decades-old tit-for-tat story took an unprecedented twist earlier this month when, after Feinstein's return from China, she claimed that during her private talks China's leaders signaled that Beijing had a proposal: if the US scrapped its plans to sell Taiwan Patriot and Harpoon missiles, Black Hawk helicopters, mine-hunting ships and communications equipment for Taiwan's F-16 fleet, China would in turn redeploy its missiles aimed at Taiwan.

Questioned during a congressional testimony by Gates, Feinstein said: "Perhaps some of this I should discuss with you privately, but in my meeting with some of the leadership it was mentioned that China had offered to redeploy back."

What to politicians sounds worth considering doesn't however withstand the scrutiny of military experts who say China's missiles could easily be positioned back in place within a day.

The main features of Taiwan's West Coast Expressway are 7-Eleven convenience stores and stalls where bikini-clad women sell Taiwan's hallmark betel nuts to transiting truck drivers. Across the windy Taiwan Strait about 180 kilometers away are the shores of the People's Republic of China. Somewhere there, an estimated 1,500 CSS-6 and CSS-7 short-range missiles are deployed targeting Taiwan.

As a flight speed of Mach 5.6 isn't easy to imagine, one has to resort to simple mathematical estimates to illustrate the proportions: it takes China's missiles a mere minute to strike the hustle and bustle of the expressway and two hours to reach the Taiwanese capital, Taipei.

Although China's short-range, road mobile, solid propellant ballistic CSS-6 and CSS-7 missiles possess insufficient range to be a strategic asset, the island's naval units, air bases, defense facilities as well as missile launchers can be stricken in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The main advantage of the CSS-6 and CSS-7 is that wind corrections aren't required before launch. Therefore, the Chinese missiles are capable of rapid targeting and can be launched from trucks or trains even while the carrying vehicle moves.

To military experts, these features mean that if China offers to redeploy its missiles aimed at Taiwan, the move would merely have political rather than military significance.

"China can make a deal with the US, move the missiles to central China [to satisfy observers] and can put them back into the original position within a day," Wang Jyh-Perng, reserve captain of the Taiwan Navy and associate research fellow at the Association for Managing Defense and Strategies, said in an interview with Asia Times Online. "And here we are talking about China's short-range missiles only since long range missiles can keep on targeting Taiwan anyway."

Therefore, claims that Beijing considers a redeployment of its missiles stationed along the Taiwan Strait can safely be regarded as empty politicians' talk, according to Wang.

To Wang, subtle changes are taking place in Beijing's cross-strait military strategies and Feinstein's comments further confirm this notion.

Nonetheless, Wang predicted that any formal announcement of a Chinese offer related to the CSS-6 and CSS-7 stationed across the Taiwan Strait is unlikely to come any time soon and Beijing will wait for an occasion of highest strategic importance, possibly next year around the first anniversary of the signing of ECFA [an economic cooperation framework agreement to be signed later this month or in early July]. More likely would be 2012, ''as an attempt to help Ma Ying-jeou with his re-election bid," Wang said.

Jens Kastner is a Taipei-based reporter.

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