MISSILE CRISIS WILL NOT BE REPEATED: SEMINAR
Taipei, Aug. 17 (CNA) Mainland China may conduct scattered "military harassment" action against Taiwan, but the missile crisis which occurred in 1996 across the Taiwan Strait is unlikely to take place again, according to experts who attended a Tuesday seminar.
At the symposium sponsored by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on mainland China's current policy toward Taiwan, DPP Chairman Lin Yi-hsiung said there have been widespread rumors that the mainland might use military force against Taiwan since President Lee Teng-hui redefined Taiwan's ties with the mainland as a "special state-to-state relationship" on July 9.
Some of these rumors have been fabricated by mainland authorities with the aim of menacing Taiwan, while some of them are products of the ignorance of the Taiwan people, Lin added, claiming that it is useless to predict or analyze Beijing's reaction as this will only lead to the loss of faith and the bargaining power to deal with the situation.
Lee Kuo-hsiung, vice director of the Institute of International Relations under National Chengchi University, pointed out that it is easy to see that the string of moves adopted by Beijing following Lee's "special state-to-state" theory have been no more than "knee jerk" reactions from a totalitarian regime.
However, Lee said, it is hard to forecast Beijing's next moves as the Chinese communist regime is now caught in a trap of its own devising -- having to win the hearts of the Taiwan people while at the same time recovering its lost face.
The most feasible development will be that Beijing will continue to intimidate Taiwan, in addition to conducting small-scale military maneuvers in the runup to Taiwan's next presidential elections slated for March 2000, he said.
W.Y. Chang, director of the Mainland China Affairs Institute at Tamkang University, said Beijing will use the promised autumn visit by top mainland negotiator with Taiwan Wang Daohan as its prime bargaining chip to keep pressure on Taiwan, coupled with verbal attacks, military intimidation and psychological war.
Wang is chairman of the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), which handles the mainland's unofficial exchanges with the island in the absence of formal contacts between the two sides.
In view of the current situation across the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan cannot afford to allow the mainland to have any excuse to use force against it, Chang asserted, saying that the two sides should further boost communication and understanding to mend their differences.
"Suspending bilateral dialogue is not the way to clarify the facts if something happens," he noted.
Pan Shih-tang, a mainland China affairs professor at Tamkang University, said he believes that the mainland will continue its military pressure on Taiwan until the March election, but will refrain from instigating another missile crisis in the Taiwan Strait.
Keeping open the invitation to Wang is the best countermeasure to curb mainland China's verbal attacks and saber rattling, he suggested. (By Flor Wang)
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
