DoD News Briefing
Thursday, August 12, 1999
Presenter: Mr. Kenneth H. Bacon, ASD PA
................
Q: Ken, can you talk about the Trent Lott letter to the Secretary on the Chinese shipping firm that apparently is going to do some work in the Panama Canal?
Mr. Bacon: The Secretary has received the letter and hasn't had a chance to respond yet. Let me just make a couple of points.
First of all, this is not a new issue. It's one that's been around for some time.
Second, the company that owns port facilities at either end of the Canal owns precisely that, port facilities that as I understand it are being designed to unload and load containers from ships that are too big to go into the Canal. So it's a way to move containers across the isthmus.
The company does not have any ability to stop or impede traffic through the Canal. In fact the treaty that has been signed by the U.S. and Panama calling for the transfer of the Canal at the end of this year provides a guarantee for security of the Canal, and it also says that the Canal will be operated in a neutral way so that, [it] is open to ships from all countries.
We do not anticipate any problems whatsoever as a result of this -- of the port facilities that are owned by a Chinese company.
Q: Does he intend to respond to the Majority Leader?
Mr. Bacon: Of course. He responds to all congressional correspondence.
Q: In other words, you do not see this development as a potential national security threat?
Mr. Bacon: We do not, and General Wilhelm has testified to that effect before the Senate Armed Services Committee. This has been reviewed by the Department of Defense and we do not see it as a potential national security threat.
Q: The fact that they own these two port facilities.
Mr. Bacon: That is correct.
Q: Back to the security agreement that was made I think in 1977. Does the United States have to be called upon by Panama to make some kind of military intervention? Or is it at the discretion of the United States? How is this to work?
Mr. Bacon: There was a reservation drafted as part of the ratification process called the DiConcini Reservation that states that if the Canal is closed, or its operations are interfered with, that the United States and the Republic of Panama each have an independent right to take any steps necessary including the use of military force to reopen the Canal. So the United States has a unilateral right to maintain the neutrality of the Canal and reopen it if there should be any military threat.
Now we do not see, as I said earlier, we do not see the Chinese-owned port facilities as a military or a national security threat.
Q: And this could be done at the discretion of the U.S. without collaboration with Panama?
Mr. Bacon: Yes.
Q: Ken, another China question.
The South China Post today reported that China may be mobilizing up to a half million reservists in the provinces or regions abutting the Taiwan Straits. Does the Pentagon have any independent corroboration that such movements are taking place, or mobilizations?
Mr. Bacon: We do not.
Q: Can you give us a sense of, how much of a logistics effort would be involved in something like this? That's quite a large number of troops.
Mr. Bacon: I'm afraid I can't talk authoritatively about the Chinese logistics system.
Q: But you haven't seen any indications to back up the report?
Mr. Bacon: No.
Q: Ken, on this hemisphere, back with China. The Spanish Miami Herald recently reported that China was building some kind of electronic facilities, transmitters, or eavesdropping posts in Cuba. Do you have any comment on that report? Is that accurate? Do you have any indications that there are some Chinese/Cuban military or intelligence collaboration?
Mr. Bacon: There's nothing I can say about that. It's an intelligence matter that I can't comment on.
.....................Q: One more question about this China thing, because periodically there are all kinds of reports about China's intentions, China's threats. Ken, is there some way to give some kind of overall sense of what the Pentagon's assumption is about China's intentions, abilities, ambitions? Is this a regional power? Is this a country that is seeking worldwide influence? Is this a country that is keeping to itself? How would you describe it?
Mr. Bacon: China is the most populous country in the world. It's a country that is working very hard to improve its agriculture and its economy. It has one fundamental challenge that is repeated time and time by its leaders, and that is to find ways to feed and employ its population which is huge, despite efforts to control it, obviously.
I think that their fundamental goal has been economic and agricultural development. When Deng Xaoping set up the four modernizations, military modernization was the last one, and it's the last one they've gotten to. They've concentrated much more heavily on industrial, agricultural modernization. We see signs that they're still doing that.
Obviously they are moving to improve their military, but I think they're generally moving in a relatively slow and measured way to improve their military. They've cut back the size of the military recently. They're clearly trying to modernize aspects of it -- their navy, their air force. But they're not doing this on a crash basis. It's nothing like a North Korean effort to funnel a huge percentage of their budget or gross domestic product into the military.
They have a relatively small strategic nuclear force that has not grown much in the last couple of years, really not grown much at all.
I think that China has benefited dramatically from stability in Asia over the last 10 or 15 years. It's this stability that has helped almost every country in Asia undergo an economic transformation including, in part, China. But certainly it's helped Taiwan, it's helped South Korea, it's helped Thailand, to a certain extent Indonesia until they encountered some economic and political problems. But this stability has benefited China enormously, and I see no indication that China wants to end this period of stability or take actions that would lead to extremely heightened tension or destabilizing factors and conditions in Asia.
Q: ...in cases of countries like Taiwan?
Mr. Bacon: We have a one-China policy. That policy says that differences between Taiwan and the Mainland will be resolved peacefully, through dialogue, over time. And we believe that's what China wants, and that's certainly what we want and have said very, very clearly -- the President has said it recently. Nearly everybody else has spoken on this, and the Administration has stressed that recently.
Q: Can I follow that up? There were some quotes by the Chinese Defense Minister earlier this month that China has to develop forces to be able to fight a war against the United States. This is a little different from what they've been saying. They usually couch their rhetoric in terms of anti-hegemonists. But this was clearly a reference directly to the United States.
Is the Pentagon concerned by the increased level of rhetoric coming from Beijing against the United States on these issues?
Mr. Bacon: I don't know how accurate those quotes were, and before commenting on them, I think I'd like to know more about the circumstances of them and whether it was an accurate account.
But the fact of the matter is that China has not put as high a premium on military modernization as it has on economic and agricultural modernization. This is true from the days of when the four modernization policies were first announced, and that hasn't changed dramatically.
China continues -- it has a very large military force, but it's not a highly modern military force. Although they are clearly working on ways to improve the force, they have a long way to go in terms of technological improvements. This does not seem to be their primary national development goal by any stretch of the imagination right now.
Press: Thank you.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug1999/t08121999_t0812asd.html
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