US redeployment seen as targeting China

Reports of US troop reductions in Asia do not ease Beijing's concern that Washington is focusing on the region

HONG KONG - Despite media reports about the United States reducing the number of its troops in Asia, Beijing remains convinced that America is shifting its strategic focus from Europe to this region.

This is how it interprets the major troop redeployment plan announced by President George W. Bush last week, the biggest force realignment since the end of the Korean War half a century ago.

It is reinforced by a fact-sheet issued by the White House which, among other things, says in Asia the US will 'improve its ability to deter, dissuade and defeat challenges through strengthened long-range strike capabilities, streamlined and consolidated headquarters, and a network of access arrangements'.

The US will also deploy, forwardly, 'additional expeditionary maritime capabilities in the Pacific to enable prompt and effective military action both regionally and globally'.

According to the fact-sheet, 'advanced strike assets will be stationed in the Western Pacific'. Beijing reads this as confirmation that more high-tech weaponry will be sent to an already well-fortified Guam.

The fact-sheet goes on to say that in North-east Asia, the US will be 'working with our strongest allies to restructure our military presence and command structures while simultaneously improving capabilities in the region'.

According to a Chinese military expert, this means the current military establishment in Japan will be upgraded from a forwardly deployed force to regional command headquarters status for troops in the entire Asia-Pacific region.

The fact-sheet adds that in Central and South-east Asia, the US is 'working to establish a network of sites to provide training opportunities and contingency access both for conventional and special forces'.

In Beijing's reckoning, all that military-speak confirms its longstanding assessment that the US is shifting its world strategic focus eastward from Europe to the West Pacific region - with China as the potential adversary.

Among the first to alert Beijing to that trend was Dr Wang Jian, an economist at the State Development and Planning Commission.

In a 1999 paper, he predicted that along with the shift in US economic focus to the Asia-Pacific region, a parallel shift in military strategy would follow.

He urged his government to study the implications of such a shift for Sino-American relations and map out a response strategy.

Since then, the National Defence University and the Academy of Military Sciences have done separate studies.

A source with knowledge of these studies says that most of them are agreed that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of China precipitated the US shift in focus.

Therefore, regardless of whether it is aimed at China, any redeployment will complicate China's bid for unification with Taiwan, an outcome which the US regards as not being in its strategic interests.

Further, a shift is almost certain to result in the two countries vying for influence in China's periphery, forcing neighbouring countries to choose sides.

But according to the source, the studies differ on how China should respond, boiling down to a key question - whether the country should stick to what the late patriarchal leader Deng Xiaoping said about the way it should conduct its foreign relations.

Since 1979, he had stressed that in a world that increasingly put greater emphasis on peace and development, China should seize on the relative stability to focus on its own economic development.

Since 1989, he had also emphasised tao guang yang hui - or hiding one's strength in order to buy time - to avoid being dragged into disputes with the US unnecessarily and being distracted from development.

However, there are now growing murmurs against their continued validity. Thus, in the face of a US redeployment that appears to be directed at China, some influential voices have called for a more assertive foreign policy.

'In our theory of peaceful rise, we stress peaceful, but the US emphasises rise, so it wants to contain us all the same,' said the source.

While China is not at all surprised by Mr Bush's redeployment per se, the stark gap in military technology hits home when it tracks what is being shifted to Asia.

According to the fact-sheet, in the 1990s, the US military began a transformation from the industrial age to the information age.

In the latter, speed, reach, stealth, precision, knowledge and combat power - not just the size of its forces - allow the US to dominate militarily.

Digitalised weaponry has resulted in a massive reduction of forwardly-deployed ground troops and the ability to strike any point in the world from a string of relatively small bases, the two points of emphasis in the current redeployment plan.

According to Dr He Weibao, a research fellow at the Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, while US troops have already graduated to digitalised weapons, China's are only half-mechanised.

China's decade for a greater emphasis on peace

1994 - The American aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and a Chinese nuclear submarine squared off in international waters off China's coast after the US dropped sonic devices designed to track the nuclear sub. Beijing promises to shoot to kill the next time such an incident occurs.

1995 - Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai threatens to nuke Los Angeles if the US defends Taiwan.

1996 - China lauches test missile off the coast of Taiwan in an attempt in intimidate historic elections. The US deploys USS Independence and USS Nimitz carrier groups to the Taiwan region.

1996 - CIA publishes a report of China's 'Denial and Deception' policy for transferring illicit sales of nuclear weapons-related hardware and technology to Iran.

1997 - Vatican slams Beijing for religious persecution and the arrest of bishops in China.

1997 - The Associated Press reports that the Clinton administration "says it is not trying to constrain China's military growth, and it sees no reason to regard the Chinese as a security threat." (what an idiot!!!)

1997 - Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) write to President Clinton, urging caution on his plan to sell cutting edge nuclear technology to the People's Republic of China. (I repeat, what an idiot!!!)

1997 - China threatens war after Taiwan's President Lee visits Cornell University

1997 - China's President Jiang "adamantly defended" the Tiananmen Square massacre as the "'correct conclusion' by the government and Chinese Communist Party.

1998 - Clinton "Donor-gate" key figure linked to Chinese Communist Party

1998 - Beijing criticized the United States and Japan over a proposed missile defense system to shield Japan from ballistic missile attack, warning that such plans could create a regional arms race

1998 - the Philippines Government accused China of sending armed cargo and warships to Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands

1998 - China toughened its stance on Tibet, warning President Clinton not to meet the Dalai Lama during his ten-day visit to the United States

2000 - Chinese military threatens US warships ahead of Taiwan elections

2000 - China Threatens Invasion of Taiwan ahead of Taiwan elections.

2000 - Sha Zukang, director general of the department of arms control disarmament in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said if Washington succeeded in its attempt to build the anti-missile shield, an arms race in space would be inevitable.

2000 - China says they will boost their nuclear forces if the US proceeds with the missile defense umbrella.

2000 - China threatened Taiwan today with "disastrous results" if it keeps insisting it is a separate nation.

2000 - People's Liberation Army newspaper threatens that China will fire long-range nuclear missiles at the United States if it defends Taiwan.

2001 - Two Chinese F-8 fighter jets harass a US Navy's EP-3 surveillance plane. One of the fighters collide with the US aircraft that forces the Americans to make an emergency landing. US crew is held hostage and eventually released. Aircraft returned to the US in pieces.

2003 - China Threatens War Against Taiwan For Splittist Tendencies

2004 - Chinese Official Threatens War if Taiwan Adopts New Constitution

Nice time line.

Some corrections.

1995 - Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai threatens to nuke Los Angeles if the US defends Taiwan.

-- China did their first missile tests in 1995 after Lee went to Cornell (see correction later).They did more in March 1996 at the time of the election.

1996 - China lauches test missile off the coast of Taiwan in an attempt in intimidate historic elections. The US deploys USS Independence and USS Nimitz carrier groups to the Taiwan region.

-- The Lee visit took place in 1995, not 1997. Here is a link to the speech he gave there. The communists used this visit as the basis to begin the "missile tests" of 1995 and 1996.

1997 - China threatens war after Taiwan's President Lee visits Cornell University

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