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CHINA PULLING WOOL OVER TAIWAN PUBLIC'S EYES: MND

ROC Central News Agency

2005-09-22 21:34:11

    Taipei, Sept. 22 (CNA) China has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the Taiwan public, deceiving them into believing that it has turned soft toward Taiwan, a Ministry of National Defense (MND) official claimed Thursday.

    Hu Chen-pu, chief of the MND's Bureau of General Political Warfare, said the Beijing leadership has been playing a "double-handed" scheme to fool the people of Taiwan by inviting opposition leaders from Taiwan for prominent visits to China and allowing freer trade policy with Taiwan in a bid to lessen Taiwan's vigilance against China and reduce its people's sense of crisis.

    Hu said that although the Chinese military has recently moved its three-services combative landing exercises from the East China Sea to the inland areas of Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces, the number and scale of the war game drills have not decreased and the number of people taking part in the drills has actually increased.

    China's "double-handed" strategy has increasingly made the people of Taiwan forget China's ever-expanding military build-up and the fact that Beijing has never renounced the use of force against Taiwan to solve cross-strait differences, according to Hu.

    Hu claimed that the scheme has led some politicians in Taiwan to believe that Taiwan's procurement of three major weaponry systems from the United States is unnecessary, a situation about which the MND is extremely worried, he added.

    Hu said that since 1989, China, with its free-wheeling economy, has continued to expand and modernize its military build-up, posing an increasing threat to Taiwan's national security and stability in the Taiwan Strait.

    The Chinese military's establishment of a combat simulation base near Hainan is "solid evidence" that it is aggressively making preparations for taking Taiwan militarily, according to Hu.

    The Chinese military established a simulated Taiwan military air base on Dahuo island to the northeast of Hainan, where the Chinese air force conducts drills against what they described as "camouflaged F-16 jetfighters." About eight kilometers away, on Hailin island, army and marine forces conduct landing and combat maneuvers from across a narrow channel to Dahuo island -- drills that are imperative and crucial for China to invade Taiwan militarily, he said.

    Hu argued that if China wants to express goodwill toward Taiwan, it should renounce the use of force against Taiwan, instead of conducting military exercises ceaselessly.

(By Deborah Kuo)

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