- By steps big and small, China is changing the balance
of power in the world.
-
- It is modernising its military and expanding its reach
with mobile launchers that could fire missiles into the American north-west
and a navy and air force that could operate well beyond its borders.
-
- None of this has escaped the notice of the United States
which is calculating how to respond to China's emergence as a strategic
power.
-
- Shifting balance of power
-
- In the strange calculus nations use to measure strategic
power, individual pieces of equipment can have radical, even world changing,
implications.
-
- China, for example, has long possessed ballistic missiles
with nuclear warheads. But in the last few years China has developed a
system to launch those missiles from trucks.
-
- The system is called a Transporter-Erector-Launcher,
or TEL. The missile it carries is called a Dongfeng-31. "Dongfeng"
means East Wind.
-
- The TEL not only transports the DF-31. The missile is
erected and then launched from the vehicle. The entire system is mobile.
-
- "This means in a crisis China can disperse its ballistic
missile forces and have a high degree of confidence some of it would survive
a pre-emptive strike by a foreign power," says James Mulvenon, who
heads a new private think tank in Washington, the Center for Intelligence
Research and Analysis (Cira).
-
- US analysts believe the DF-31 will be deployed in the
next few years. They also believe the missile has the range to hit the
north-western United States.
-
- "This in a broader sense gives China a true survivable
nuclear deterrent and the confidence that goes along with that in terms
of its military policy and the conduct of its national security policy
abroad," says Mr Mulvenon.
-
- For the United States, the advent of such a system begins
the shift in the strategic equation.
-
- Flashpoint Taiwan
-
- And it is not only DF-31s that are reshaping the strategic
landscape.
-
- China is thought to be close to developing an effective
in-flight refuelling capacity.
-
- That will give its air force a much longer range. It
is investing in submarines, and in command and control systems which it
hopes will allow it to compete on a high technology battlefield.
-
- China's new confidence will show itself in the coming
years. We will probably see the Chinese navy moving to secure sea lanes
and oil supplies from the Middle East.
-
- We will see its air force roaming much further from home,
monitoring other forces in the region.
-
- And, maybe, we will see China really gearing up to retake
Taiwan by force.
-
- The head of the CIA, Porter Goss, told Congress recently
that his agency believes China is ready to fight for Taiwan.
-
- "China's military build-up threatens the balance
of power in the Taiwan Strait," said Mr Goss.
-
- If Taiwan, in its efforts to establish a true, independent
nationhood, pushed Beijing beyond the limits of its tolerance, "we
assess that Beijing will respond with varying degrees of force," he
said.
-
- The last thing America needs now - with its military
already extended in Iraq and Afghanistan - is to be sucked into a conflict
with China over Taiwan.
-
- When, a week ago, China announced that, for a fifth year
in a row, it was increasing its military spending, there was not much surprise
in Washington, but a perennial anxiety over China's long-term intentions
was reinforced.
-
- "The bottom line is what these annual increases
tell us about intent," says Cira's James Mulvenon.
-
- "[The Chinese] believe the potential for a conflict
with the US over Taiwan is a very real scenario. And they have to have
real, credible, concrete military options should that occur," he said.
-
- China says publicly that it will spend about $30bn this
year on its military. Analysts in the US suspect the real figure is perhaps
half as much again.
-
- Even so, China's military spending is only about one-tenth
of what the US is due to spend in the coming year.
-
- But in preparing for a "Taiwan scenario", the
Chinese have a focussed objective, which allows them to channel their spending
towards specific, rather than contingency, plans.
-
- Trans-Atlantic friction
-
- If America's strategic preoccupations with China are
long-term, there exist short-term preoccupations that threaten the equilibrium
of this delicate, changing relationship.
-
- China has announced a planned "anti-secession law"
aimed at preventing a formal statement of independence by Taiwan, and reinforcing
the threat of force.
-
- A White house spokesman has called the planned law "unhelpful",
and has asked China to "reconsider".
-
- And the US considers equally unhelpful a plan by European
countries to lift the arms embargo on China, which was imposed in 1989.
-
- US analysts say sensitive technology could fall into
Chinese hands if European countries recommence selling weapons systems
to China.
-
- They worry particularly that some European battlefield
communication and command and control systems are designed to operate alongside
US systems.
-
- Purchasing those European systems, they argue, could
allow China insight into the way the US military operates.
-
- And in Congress, they smell a rat.
-
- The Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
Richard Lugar, told the BBC he believed the Europeans were simply trying
to curry favour with Beijing in order to win lucrative business contracts
for companies like Airbus.
-
- "Folks weren't born yesterday in this country,"
he said. This has the makings of a major trans-Atlantic row.
-
- But it is a measure of China's leverage and its attractiveness
as a business opportunity that Europe would risk a diplomatic spat with
the United States.
-
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4342527.stm
-
- © BBC MMV
|
