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China's new missiles pose serious threat to Taiwan: official

Central News Agency

2011/03/16 18:17:07

By Hsieh Chia-chen and Sofia Wu

Taipei, March 16 (CNA) China's new Dongfeng-16 ballistic missiles pose a serious threat to Taiwan, National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai De-sheng said Wednesday.

In his first confirmation of China's new missile deployment, Tsai said Dongfeng-16 is a new type of ballistic missile that has a longer range than anything in China's current cross-Taiwan Strait arsenal.

Moreover, said the intelligence chief, Dongfeng-16 has considerable destructive power that severely threatens Taiwan's security.

He was responding to a question from ruling Kuomintang Legislator Lin Yu-fang while delivering a report on the country's intelligence affairs and his bureau's operations at a hearing of the legislature's Foreign and National Defense Committee.

Dongfeng is a series of intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missiles operated by China's military.

Asked whether Dongfeng-16s are developed against Taiwan, Tsai said China's military arsenal has never been merely for use against Taiwan.

According to Tsai, China has also deployed the Dongfeng-21D missile and has completed a number of tests on this new weapon.

The Dongfeng-21D is an anti-ship ballistic missile, the first of its kind, and is potentially capable of hitting moving targets with pinpoint precision. U.S. defense analysts have estimated that the 21-D has a range between 1,995km to 2,993km. Many have called it a "game changer" that could threaten the American carrier fleet's supremacy in the Pacific, especially if conflicts brew in the Taiwan Strait or on the Korean Peninsula.

Even though China often said its military buildup was aimed at preventing Taiwan from declaring de jure independence, explained Tsai, "that was only a pretext to divert the concern of other countries from its weapons development projects."

If China actually stuck to that argument, it would not have developed missiles with ranges longer than 600 kilometers, Tsai contended.

Tsai said most of China's weapons are anti-interference systems and that the Chinese have enhanced the accuracy of their ballistic missiles. In addition, most of China's missiles have multiple warheads capable of hitting different targets in a certain area, such as radars and planes at airports.

Tsai, however, refrained from answering press inquiries on whether China's newly deployed Dongfeng-16 missiles have multiple warhead technology.

As to whether China would decommission its other missiles targeted at Taiwan after its Dongfeng-16 deployment, Tsai said some of them were deployed to replace old ones while others have added to the existing arsenal.

Despite improvements in relations across the Taiwan Strait since President Ma Ying-jeou assumed office in May 2008, China still has more than 1,000 ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan.

With the recent nuclear crisis in Japan raising concerns of the safety of nuclear power in Taiwan, Tsai also had to field a question on how Taiwan would cope with a possible Chinese attack on its nuclear power plants.

Tsai responded that the government has consistently assessed such a possibility in the military's annual large-scale training drills.

In his view, Tsai said, such a move would not be in China's strategic interest because the radioactive fallout could impact China's southeastern coast, which lies opposite Taiwan on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.