Paramilitary policemen practise during a daily training session at the Forbidden City in Beijing, February 1, 2010.
Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou (L) speaks to Taiwan's top negotiator on China policy, Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman P.K. Chiang, during an International Democrat Union (IDU) meeting in Taipei, February 1, 2010.
Paramilitary policemen practise during a daily training session at the Forbidden City in Beijing, February 1, 2010.
A child runs past a torpedo on display outside the Taiwan Armed Forces Museum in Taipei, January 30, 2010.
U.S. Assistant Defense Secretary for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Wallace Gregson speaks during a forum hosted by the Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo, February 1, 2010. The United States intends to meet its obligation to ensure Taiwan's self-defence capabilities, Gregson said on Monda
Chinese state media blasted the United States on Monday for a planned $6.4 billion arms package for Taiwan but U.S. officials said they hoped the flap would be temporary and not derail cooperation.
The arms sales, the latest by the United States but the first by the Obama administration, has added to a litany of strains between the world's biggest and third-biggest economies, including the value of China's currency, trade protectionism, Internet freedoms and Tibet.
The official China Daily said U.S. weapons sales to the self-ruled island, which China claims as its own, "inevitably cast a long shadow on Sino-U.S. relations."
"China's response, no matter how vehement, is justified. No country worthy of respect can sit idle while its national security is endangered and core interests damaged," the English-language newspaper said in an editorial.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the U.S.-China relationship was important and "I don't think that either country can afford to simply walk away from the other."
Gibbs said any sanctions against the companies involved in the arms sales, a move threatened by China for the first time, would not be warranted.
The United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, recognizing "one China," and says it wants the two sides to settle their differences peacefully. The United States remains Taiwan's biggest backer and is obliged by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to help in the island's defense
.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the arms sale decision reflected "long-standing commitments to provide for Taiwan's defensive needs."
"We will, as always, pursue our interests but we will do it in a way that we think allows for positive and cooperative relations with China," he told reporters.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates defended the arms sale, telling reporters he hoped China's decision to protest by curtailing bilateral military contacts would be temporary and that he still planned to visit China later this year.
"Stability is enhanced by contact between our military and a greater understanding of each other's strategies, so I hope that if there is a downturn, that it will be a temporary one and that we can get back to strengthening this relationship," Gates said.
MISSILE BUILDUP CONCERNS
The Pentagon's 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review Report to Congress, published on Monday, said the United States was concerned and closely monitoring China's missile buildup and increasingly advanced capabilities in the Pacific region.
"One regional trend that particularly concerns the United States is the growing imbalance of power across the Taiwan Strait in China's favor," the report said.
The report said U.S. defense policymakers "remain committed to a relationship that is positive, cooperative, and comprehensive and do not believe a hostile or adversarial relationship with China is by any means inevitable."
Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province that must accept eventual unification, by force if necessary. China's ruling Communist Party controls the country's media and uses them at sensitive times to amplify its message.
Venting intense anger over the arms sales, Chinese Internet users called for a boycott of top U.S. exporter and plane-maker Boeing Co and other companies supplying parts.
China has for years opposed U.S. defense sales to Taiwan, which has been separated from mainland rule since 1949 and was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945.
But for the first time, Beijing sought to pressure the United States by threatening to formally punish companies whose arms are involved in the arms package, which was announced on Friday.
"China has no room whatever for compromise on this issue," said a commentary in the Liberation Army Daily, the mouthpiece of the country's military, adding that Chinese armed forces were ready for "resolute struggle" over Taiwan.
"It is entirely reasonable to impose corresponding sanctions on U.S. companies involved in arms sales to Taiwan."
U.S. arms exporters declined to comment on the Chinese threat and White House spokesman Gibbs said: "I don't think those (sanctions) would be warranted."
Walter Lohman, director of Asian studies at the Heritage
Foundation, said China's response was "mostly noise" and probably designed to deter Washington from considering selling F-16 advanced fighter jets to Taiwan.
"Partly what they're doing now is trying to scare us off the F-16 sale, by making a big deal out of this one," he said.
CHINESE FACE LIMITED OPTIONS
Chinese shares appeared unmoved but trading in offshore one-year dollar/yuan non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) implied slightly slower appreciation for the yuan over the next 12 months.
Dealers said the NDFs shift was mainly driven by the dollar's global strength but the Sino-U.S. tension contributed.
China's top leaders, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, have not publicly commented on what they have said is their nation's topmost issue, suggesting they want to keep some leeway in dealing with Washington.
Despite Beijing's strident words, options for punishing the United States were limited, said Drew Thompson, director of China Studies at the Nixon Center, a thinktank in Washington.
"They don't have a lot of leverage, and that's a source of frustration for them," he said. "It's hard to picture what they could do that's anything other than symbolic."
Sanctions on Boeing could give its rival, Airbus, more leverage in negotiations with Chinese buyers, Thompson said.
U.S. officials have said Taiwan, which lags China in the balance of military power, needs updated weapons to give it more sway with Beijing, which Taiwan says has more than 1,400 short- and mid-range missiles aimed at the island.
Beijing would postpone or partially halt some military contacts with the United States, including visits planned for this year such as Gates's trip, Xinhua news agency said.
China also said the dispute will damage cooperation with the United States over international issues. Washington has sought stronger Chinese support over several hotspots, chiefly the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.
"It's difficult to take what are global problems and use them as a tool to vent frustration over a bilateral issue," Thompson said of China's options. "They risk isolating themselves pretty badly."
The $6.4 bln sale has outraged Beijing
US President Barack Obama came in for criticism last year for not meeting with Tibetan spiritual leader, The Dalai Lama
Taiwanese soldiers man US-made anti-tank missiles during a military event in the island's capital, Taipei
White House has warned China against sanctioning US firms
US urge China against sanction
The United States has urged China not to slap sanctions on US companies selling arms to Taiwan, as the firms tried to stay out of President Barack Obama's biggest row yet with Beijing.
The Obama administration defended the arms sale Monday as preserving the military balance between Taiwan and fast-growing China, which reacted furiously to a US announcement it was selling the 6.4 billion dollars in weapons.
Beijing has always strongly opposed US sales to Taiwan, which it considers a Chinese territory awaiting reunification. But in a new step, China pledged Saturday to punish the US companies involved in the deal. Related article: China furious at US 'arrogance' on Taiwan
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Chinese sanctions "would not be warranted."
Gibbs said that Obama had spoken to Chinese leaders when he visited Beijing in November about the question of arms sales to Taiwan, and other issues.
"We've always said that we want the type of relationship where we're working together on important issues of mutual concern," Gibbs said.
"But when we have disagreements... we'll voice those disagreements out in the open, in public."
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the sale was consistent with longstanding US policy of only recognizing Beijing but of providing Taiwan with weapons to ward off a potential invasion.
"We think these defensive arms will contribute to security and stability across the Taiwan Strait," Crowley said.
"We regret the fact that they have suggested they will impose sanctions on US companies involved in the sale of these defensive articles."
Obama has tried to pursue wide-ranging cooperation with China, saying that the world's largest developed and developing economies can work together on issues from climate change to the North Korean and Iranian nuclear disputes.
But relations have hit a rough patch on a range of disputes including Google's revelations last month that China had been hacking into accounts of the company and human rights activists.
Another row may be fast approaching as Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is visiting the United States in late February.
Obama came under intense criticism at home last year for not meeting with the Dalai Lama so as not to sour the mood before the president's trip to China.
The US side agreed that Obama would meet later with the Dalai Lama, who is widely respected in the United States but vilified by China.
US companies involved in the Taiwan deal all declined to comment other than to say that the issue concerned governments and not individual firms.
An official at one company noted that China did not reveal details about the sanctions, making it difficult to gauge the impact.
US defense contractors sell little to China, which has been under a US and EU arms embargo since its bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
But Boeing Co. -- whose McDonnell Douglas unit was given a 37 million-dollar contract for 12 Harpoon missiles to Taiwan -- is an aerospace giant which counts China as one of its largest markets.
Nonetheless, Boeing shares closed up 1.82 percent on the New York Stock Exchange, outpacing the benchmark Dow index, after Obama's budget proposal outlined new business for the company with NASA.
Boeing has deep ties with the aviation industry in China, which could stand to lose if it sanctioned the aviation giant.
Three Chinese companies are under contract to produce key parts of Boeing's emblematic 787 Dreamliner, which took to the skies in December after a more than two-year delay.
Aviation expert Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at Teal Group, said that with past arms sales to Taiwan, "it's usually been this little dance of expressing disapproval over a few months and then things return to normal."
"But you never know when there could be a tipping point," he said. "If somehow Europe stays squeaky clean and the US has this tension over Taiwan and Tibet and cyber freedom and climate change, then there may be a shift to the European aerospace companies."
--------
---------
--------
----------
0 comments:
Post a Comment