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Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1999

Editorial

Taiwan Speaks Up

You could spend forever trying to figure out exactly why Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui decided to tell a German radio service that Taipei and Beijing should begin dealing with each other on a basis of "special state-to-state relations." We ourselves saw nothing much in last weekend's remarks that went beyond what officials in Taiwan have said before. More significantly, President Lee himself said yesterday that Taiwan's mainland policy "has not changed." In a meeting with America's top representative in Taiwan, Daryl Johnson, the president said he was merely trying to "clarify and specify" the relationship for positive reasons.

Even so, Mr. Lee had to know that his comments would cause a ruckus and that--in the context of recent strains in the U.S.-Sino relationship, for instance--China wouldn't be the only entity making angry noises. So why did he say it, and why now?

Mainstream supposition has been that the president revived the touchy theme of the island's status vis-a-vis the mainland for domestic political reasons. But there is more than that at stake for Taiwan here. Mr. Lee may have been more concerned with trying to properly position the United States. He knows full well that Washington's demonstrated attitude toward Taiwan, and specifically the credibility of a U.S. commitment to defend the principle of peaceful reunification, is the key to the island's future. Because that is how China sees things, too.

Consider what Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said this week in Beijing. Predictably, there was a statement about Taiwan taking "extremely dangerous steps," and a warning that China is prepared to use force to block independence for the island. But look at who the adversary turns out to be: The use of force, Ms. Zhang said, "is by no means directed against our compatriots in Taiwan. It is rather directed against the attempts by foreign forces to interfere in China's reunification hopes. . . ."

When you look at how the biggest of all "foreign forces" has been behaving in recent years, it would appear that China's expressed fear of U.S. interference is exaggerated. It is true that Beijing's relations with Washington have been strained--by NATO's accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade and by Mr. Clinton's handling of the WTO issue. Yet if Taiwan is a sore spot today, that is not the Clinton Administration's fault. Anything Mr. Clinton did to irk Beijing early on he more than made up for last year, when he gave the greatest gift of all and became the first U.S. president to endorse China's unequivocal position of sovereignty over Taiwan.

Though Taiwan kept quiet about it at the time, the implications of this seismic shift have been preying on minds in Taipei ever since. The early stirrings of next year's presidential campaign on the island will have revived dread of another scenario like the campaign of 1996, when China tried to spook voters on Taiwan by test-firing missiles across the Strait. In a way it didn't work; people voted for President Lee anyway. But markets tanked, capital fled and the United States--though it sent some ships of the 7th Fleet to the area--did not skip a beat in its friendship dance with Beijing.

There's long been a view in Taipei that next year China might try something even more menacing militarily. We don't know if President Lee, who retires next year, anticipates another display of Chinese aggression ahead of the election for his successor. But he knows the subject of Taiwan's status will be an issue in the campaign, since nobody can win an election there without appealing to the majority sentiment in favor of, at the very least, state-like status. It's possible that by bringing it up at this time he was trying to get the fuss out of the way now rather than next year when Beijing could use campaign talk on that subject as a pretext for more saber rattling, or worse.

One thing seems certain: the weaker Beijing perceives Washington to be, the more likely Straits relations are to deteriorate. In this regard, there is one ray of hope in Washington's assertion this week that the only way for China and Taiwan to resolve their problems is through face to face talks. In basic terms, that is precisely what Taiwan wants. To sweeten Beijing's incentive to send its top Strait envoy, Wang Daohan, to Taipei later this year, Taiwan has also implied that it might meet China's key demand that any discussions must cover reunification. If Washington does nothing else useful in the current situation, it should keep high level cross-Strait talks at the top of its agenda.

The tragedy is that U.S. evenhandedness is no longer good enough. By tilting so far in Beijing's direction over the past years, in fact, the Clinton Administration has decreased the chances for fruitful discussions or even ditente between Beijing and Taipei. Washington has awarded China superior status, an acknowledged statehood; but Taiwan gets no status at all. What kind of bargaining position is that supposed to be?

Who, on either side of the Strait, believes anything useful can come of talks between a sovereign state and a place on the map? Yet that is the box the Clinton Administration has put Taiwan into. Who can blame President Lee, then, for unilaterally declaring this isn't the way he sees things?

It may earn him bad-mouthing from Washington not unlike what was directed at another democratically elected leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, for not bowing to the wishes of Yasser Arafat. But what else is a leader to do when put into the kind of position that a weak and corrupt administration in Washington has assigned to Mr. Lee? He knows, as do the mainlanders, that the U.S., like it or not, remains a key player in this game.

http://www.wsj.com
The Wall Street Journal, July 20, 1999

Editorial

One Hand Whitewashes the Other

Hardly a day passes anymore without a headline somewhere trumpeting a story of how the United States, as the world's sole superpower, keeps throwing its weight around to the detriment of all those nations on the receiving end of American bullying. Nothing could be further from the truth. U.S. allies are indeed suffering from neglect. But everywhere else you look, some dictator or second-tier power is pulling Bill Clinton's chain. The situation is somewhat different with China. There, despite strains in the U.S.-Sino relationship, Washington and Beijing are operating very much in sync these days. Yet the overall picture is one of endemic U.S. weakness.

Nowhere has the picture of superpower impotence been sharper than in Kosovo, when the NATO allies stood by helplessly as Russian soldiers muscled their way into the province. America of old may have won the Cold War, but a few weeks ago it didn't even have the courage to confront a ragtag remnant of the Soviet army or the enfeebled government that sent them. U.S. officials only made a bad situation worse by pretending that the Russian invaders had a right to be there. In Asia, meanwhile, North Korea has rightly interpreted six years of kid-glove handling by the Clinton administration as a green light for ballistic missile tests without much fear of punishment.

The most dramatic example of how overrated America's supposedly invincible superpower status is can be seen today around Taiwan. By law at least, the United States is obliged to defend Taiwan and in a uni-hegemony world you'd think that would be ample deterrence. Instead, we have China openly threatening to "use force" against the island if it sees fit, and accompanying that threat with what Beijing wants us to believe are ominously serious military exercises. In case anyone doesn't get the message, China chose last week to announce to the world that it has neutron bombs--the ideal weapon for obliterating the pesky people on Taiwan with radioactive fallout that won't knock down any valuable real estate.

What does the Clinton administration have to say about all this? Well, it is saying almost the same things Beijing is; and even when U.S. officials aren't echoing Beijing's line they are in effect reinforcing it. You might call it a case of one hand whitewashing the other.

Take Taiwan. Whose fault is it that China is saber rattling at Taiwan, and shaking markets across Asia? Not China, it would seem, which is merely reacting to provocative remarks by Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui to the effect that the island can't negotiate successfully with Beijing unless the two sides meet each other on a equal, state-like level. While Washington has not exonerated China, it has had no unkind words for Beijing either. In a gesture that almost certainly was meant to underline official sentiment, President Clinton rang Chinese President Jiang Zemin this weekend to assure him that the U.S. fully backs Beijing's One-China policy.

It is becoming increasingly clear that President Lee spoke when and how he did because Taipei has been under heavy-duty pressure from the U.S.--applied chiefly by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Stanley Roth--to begin discussing reunification with Beijing. The question of how Taipei can hope to negotiate anything from a position of diplomatic nothingness does not seem to concern Mr. Roth or his masters. With hindsight, in fact, it would appear that Mr. Clinton's decision last year to get 100% behind China's assertion of absolute sovereignty over Taiwan was intended to construct just such a box around Taipei. President Lee may have knocked down a panel 11 days ago, but he's not out of the box.

Perhaps the most alarming example of mutual massaging can be found in Sino-U.S. reactions to the Cox report prepared by the U.S. Congress, which details China's theft or acquisition by other unsavory means of American nuclear and military technology over the years. Predictably, when Beijing released its evaluation of the Cox report last week, the line was that the whole thing is a pack of lies. What wasn't available on the Internet, China insists, Chinese scientists invented all on their own, including the neutron bomb.

As suspect as Beijing's version of the story may be, you won't find anyone in the Clinton administration rushing to challenge China's account. In fact, China's whitewash is splashing over some things the U.S. administration also would prefer to obscure. The key unanswered question from the Cox report is why the Clinton administration ignored, or at least tried to hide, evidence of Chinese espionage when it came to light three years ago. So any sand Beijing can kick into the eyes of U.S. congressmen and others about the Cox report helps the Clintonites too.

But even that doesn't explain the mind-boggling comments of U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen when he was asked about the implications of the Cox report and Chinese espionage for U.S. security. China's neutron bomb, a weapon so vile that the U.S. decided not to deploy it? Not news, said a blase Secretary Cohen, and what's the difference if they built it or stole it. China's increasingly sophisticated nuclear arsenal? Oh, we already know China has nuclear weapons, Mr. Cohen pooh-poohed. That's not the problem. What we should worry about is other countries that want to develop or get nuclear weapons.

Strange talk, coming from America's defense chief and about a nation known to be an energetic marketer of advanced weapons to rogue states. So strange, and yet so typical in a way, that a group of four American defense and foreign policy heavyweights--two Democrats and two Republicans--are proposing to help sort out the disarray. In a statement about to be issued by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, William Perry, Caspar Weinberger, Richard Perle and Sam Nunn call upon the U.S. Congress and President Clinton to establish a ``B Team'' to review Washington's policy options toward China. It is hard to disagree with the idea that the United States needs to do some serious thinking about China. Unfortunately, what looks like honest confusion to some observers is appearing more and more like something instead calculated to ignore honest advice.

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SSSSS	*WALL STREET JOURNAL*	SSSSS
SSSSS	http://www.wsj.com Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1999 Editorial Taiwan Speaks Up You could spend forever trying to figure out exactly why Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui decided to tell a German radio service that Taipei and Beijing should begin dealing with each other on a basis of "special state-to-state relations." We ourselves saw nothing much in last weekend's remarks that went beyond what officials in Taiwan have said before. More significantly, President Lee himself said yesterday that Taiwan's mainland policy "has not changed." In a meeting with America's top representative in Taiwan, Daryl Johnson, the president said he was merely trying to "clarify and specify" the relationship for positive reasons. Even so, Mr. Lee had to know that his comments would cause a ruckus and that--in the context of recent strains in the U.S.-Sino relationship, for instance--China wouldn't be the only entity making angry noises. So why did he say it, and why now? Mainstream supposition has been that the president revived the touchy theme of the island's status vis-a-vis the mainland for domestic political reasons. But there is more than that at stake for Taiwan here. Mr. Lee may have been more concerned with trying to properly position the United States. He knows full well that Washington's demonstrated attitude toward Taiwan, and specifically the credibility of a U.S. commitment to defend the principle of peaceful reunification, is the key to the island's future. Because that is how China sees things, too. Consider what Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said this week in Beijing. Predictably, there was a statement about Taiwan taking "extremely dangerous steps," and a warning that China is prepared to use force to block independence for the island. But look at who the adversary turns out to be: The use of force, Ms. Zhang said, "is by no means directed against our compatriots in Taiwan. It is rather directed against the attempts by foreign forces to interfere in China's reunification hopes. . . ." When you look at how the biggest of all "foreign forces" has been behaving in recent years, it would appear that China's expressed fear of U.S. interference is exaggerated. It is true that Beijing's relations with Washington have been strained--by NATO's accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade and by Mr. Clinton's handling of the WTO issue. Yet if Taiwan is a sore spot today, that is not the Clinton Administration's fault. Anything Mr. Clinton did to irk Beijing early on he more than made up for last year, when he gave the greatest gift of all and became the first U.S. president to endorse China's unequivocal position of sovereignty over Taiwan. Though Taiwan kept quiet about it at the time, the implications of this seismic shift have been preying on minds in Taipei ever since. The early stirrings of next year's presidential campaign on the island will have revived dread of another scenario like the campaign of 1996, when China tried to spook voters on Taiwan by test-firing missiles across the Strait. In a way it didn't work; people voted for President Lee anyway. But markets tanked, capital fled and the United States--though it sent some ships of the 7th Fleet to the area--did not skip a beat in its friendship dance with Beijing. There's long been a view in Taipei that next year China might try something even more menacing militarily. We don't know if President Lee, who retires next year, anticipates another display of Chinese aggression ahead of the election for his successor. But he knows the subject of Taiwan's status will be an issue in the campaign, since nobody can win an election there without appealing to the majority sentiment in favor of, at the very least, state-like status. It's possible that by bringing it up at this time he was trying to get the fuss out of the way now rather than next year when Beijing could use campaign talk on that subject as a pretext for more saber rattling, or worse. One thing seems certain: the weaker Beijing perceives Washington to be, the more likely Straits relations are to deteriorate. In this regard, there is one ray of hope in Washington's assertion this week that the only way for China and Taiwan to resolve their problems is through face to face talks. In basic terms, that is precisely what Taiwan wants. To sweeten Beijing's incentive to send its top Strait envoy, Wang Daohan, to Taipei later this year, Taiwan has also implied that it might meet China's key demand that any discussions must cover reunification. If Washington does nothing else useful in the current situation, it should keep high level cross-Strait talks at the top of its agenda. The tragedy is that U.S. evenhandedness is no longer good enough. By tilting so far in Beijing's direction over the past years, in fact, the Clinton Administration has decreased the chances for fruitful discussions or even ditente between Beijing and Taipei. Washington has awarded China superior status, an acknowledged statehood; but Taiwan gets no status at all. What kind of bargaining position is that supposed to be? Who, on either side of the Strait, believes anything useful can come of talks between a sovereign state and a place on the map? Yet that is the box the Clinton Administration has put Taiwan into. Who can blame President Lee, then, for unilaterally declaring this isn't the way he sees things? It may earn him bad-mouthing from Washington not unlike what was directed at another democratically elected leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, for not bowing to the wishes of Yasser Arafat. But what else is a leader to do when put into the kind of position that a weak and corrupt administration in Washington has assigned to Mr. Lee? He knows, as do the mainlanders, that the U.S., like it or not, remains a key player in this game. http://www.wsj.com The Wall Street Journal, July 20, 1999 Editorial One Hand Whitewashes the Other Hardly a day passes anymore without a headline somewhere trumpeting a story of how the United States, as the world's sole superpower, keeps throwing its weight around to the detriment of all those nations on the receiving end of American bullying. Nothing could be further from the truth. U.S. allies are indeed suffering from neglect. But everywhere else you look, some dictator or second-tier power is pulling Bill Clinton's chain. The situation is somewhat different with China. There, despite strains in the U.S.-Sino relationship, Washington and Beijing are operating very much in sync these days. Yet the overall picture is one of endemic U.S. weakness. Nowhere has the picture of superpower impotence been sharper than in Kosovo, when the NATO allies stood by helplessly as Russian soldiers muscled their way into the province. America of old may have won the Cold War, but a few weeks ago it didn't even have the courage to confront a ragtag remnant of the Soviet army or the enfeebled government that sent them. U.S. officials only made a bad situation worse by pretending that the Russian invaders had a right to be there. In Asia, meanwhile, North Korea has rightly interpreted six years of kid-glove handling by the Clinton administration as a green light for ballistic missile tests without much fear of punishment. The most dramatic example of how overrated America's supposedly invincible superpower status is can be seen today around Taiwan. By law at least, the United States is obliged to defend Taiwan and in a uni-hegemony world you'd think that would be ample deterrence. Instead, we have China openly threatening to "use force" against the island if it sees fit, and accompanying that threat with what Beijing wants us to believe are ominously serious military exercises. In case anyone doesn't get the message, China chose last week to announce to the world that it has neutron bombs--the ideal weapon for obliterating the pesky people on Taiwan with radioactive fallout that won't knock down any valuable real estate. What does the Clinton administration have to say about all this? Well, it is saying almost the same things Beijing is; and even when U.S. officials aren't echoing Beijing's line they are in effect reinforcing it. You might call it a case of one hand whitewashing the other. Take Taiwan. Whose fault is it that China is saber rattling at Taiwan, and shaking markets across Asia? Not China, it would seem, which is merely reacting to provocative remarks by Taiwan's President Lee Teng-hui to the effect that the island can't negotiate successfully with Beijing unless the two sides meet each other on a equal, state-like level. While Washington has not exonerated China, it has had no unkind words for Beijing either. In a gesture that almost certainly was meant to underline official sentiment, President Clinton rang Chinese President Jiang Zemin this weekend to assure him that the U.S. fully backs Beijing's One-China policy. It is becoming increasingly clear that President Lee spoke when and how he did because Taipei has been under heavy-duty pressure from the U.S.--applied chiefly by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Stanley Roth--to begin discussing reunification with Beijing. The question of how Taipei can hope to negotiate anything from a position of diplomatic nothingness does not seem to concern Mr. Roth or his masters. With hindsight, in fact, it would appear that Mr. Clinton's decision last year to get 100% behind China's assertion of absolute sovereignty over Taiwan was intended to construct just such a box around Taipei. President Lee may have knocked down a panel 11 days ago, but he's not out of the box. Perhaps the most alarming example of mutual massaging can be found in Sino-U.S. reactions to the Cox report prepared by the U.S. Congress, which details China's theft or acquisition by other unsavory means of American nuclear and military technology over the years. Predictably, when Beijing released its evaluation of the Cox report last week, the line was that the whole thing is a pack of lies. What wasn't available on the Internet, China insists, Chinese scientists invented all on their own, including the neutron bomb. As suspect as Beijing's version of the story may be, you won't find anyone in the Clinton administration rushing to challenge China's account. In fact, China's whitewash is splashing over some things the U.S. administration also would prefer to obscure. The key unanswered question from the Cox report is why the Clinton administration ignored, or at least tried to hide, evidence of Chinese espionage when it came to light three years ago. So any sand Beijing can kick into the eyes of U.S. congressmen and others about the Cox report helps the Clintonites too. But even that doesn't explain the mind-boggling comments of U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen when he was asked about the implications of the Cox report and Chinese espionage for U.S. security. China's neutron bomb, a weapon so vile that the U.S. decided not to deploy it? Not news, said a blase Secretary Cohen, and what's the difference if they built it or stole it. China's increasingly sophisticated nuclear arsenal? Oh, we already know China has nuclear weapons, Mr. Cohen pooh-poohed. That's not the problem. What we should worry about is other countries that want to develop or get nuclear weapons. Strange talk, coming from America's defense chief and about a nation known to be an energetic marketer of advanced weapons to rogue states. So strange, and yet so typical in a way, that a group of four American defense and foreign policy heavyweights--two Democrats and two Republicans--are proposing to help sort out the disarray. In a statement about to be issued by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, William Perry, Caspar Weinberger, Richard Perle and Sam Nunn call upon the U.S. Congress and President Clinton to establish a ``B Team'' to review Washington's policy options toward China. It is hard to disagree with the idea that the United States needs to do some serious thinking about China. Unfortunately, what looks like honest confusion to some observers is appearing more and more like something instead calculated to ignore honest advice. ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
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