- BEIJING (Reuters) - China
believes the U.S. decision to sell Taiwan submarines crosses a strategic
red line and will take swift and concrete actions in retaliation, a leading
Chinese academic predicted Tuesday.
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- "I think there will be some substantive actions
and this will come very soon," said Wu Xinbo, a professor at the Fudan
University Center for American Studies in Shanghai.
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- "I cannot identify the specific areas at this moment,
but those actions will make the U.S. acutely aware of the cost of its behavior
on this issue and remind the U.S. about the relative gain or loss from
its Taiwan policy," Wu said.
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- "There will be some things that are substantial,
not just symbolic," he said.
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- China has yet to respond officially to the arms sales
package, which it had lobbied to halt. A senior congressional aide said
Washington would sell Taiwan four Kidd Class destroyers, eight submarines
and 12 P-3 anti-submarine aircraft.
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- President Bush had turned down a request from Taiwan,
at least for now, to buy the Aegis system, the aide said.
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- China-U.S. ties are already strained by a tense showdown
over the April 1 collision between a U.S. EP-3 spy plane and a Chinese
fighter jet and by former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's impending visit
to the United States.
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- RED-LINE ITEMS
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- Wu, who writes frequently on U.S.-China security issues,
said China had considered submarines "red-line" items on Taiwan's
weapons shopping list, along with the advanced Aegis naval air defense
system and the PAC-3 missile defense system.
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- "At this stage, protest is too mild an action, given
this break of the red line, and I'm concerned at its effect on cross-Strait
relations and U.S.-China relations," he said.
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- China would not be assuaged by Bush's decision to put
off the sale of the Aegis and PAC-3 systems because previous U.S. administrations
had stopped short of submarine sales to Taiwan.
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- "This package represents a major breakthrough in
U.S. arms sales policy to Taiwan and this will be certainly viewed by Beijing
as a major problem for U.S.-China relations and for cross-Strait relations,"
he said.
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- Yan Xuetong, executive director of the Center for Foreign
Policy Studies at Tsinghua University, said: "I don't think the American
decision not to sell the Aegis is a kind of compromise."
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- "They used the Aegis like a bluff card to sell essential
weapons to Taiwan, especially submarines," Yan said.
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- "If tensions over Taiwan are going on, the U.S.
will someday sell Aegis to Taiwan," he added.
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- NON-PROLIFERATION FALLOUT?
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- Asked about the message Beijing will draw from the Taiwan
arms package, Yan said: "Politically, that indicates the Bush administration
no longer considers strategic cooperation with China."
-
- Although Yan declined to predict how China might retaliate
against the new arms package, he referred to non-proliferation -- an area
where many analysts believe Beijing has previously linked on-again, off-again
cooperation with Washington to Taiwan arms.
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- "China will feel hopeless to maintain the international
regime of non-proliferation if the United States tries to undermine that
regime," Yan said.
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- A Western diplomat said China would probably avoid "obvious,
high-profile acts of retaliation" in favor of a "revenge-by-stealth
process" in non-proliferation policies.
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- Reneging outright on commitments to control chemical
and biological weapons or missiles was unlikely because it would hurt China's
international image, the diplomat said.
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- "But there are areas of military and technological
cooperation that they can indulge in with states in the Middle East where
they're technically not in breach of any agreements," he said, referring
to past Chinese help for Iran and Pakistan.
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- "There's potential for them to increase cooperation
there as a way of putting pressure on the U.S. in the long term."
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