China's Hollow Military:.

The article "China's Hollow Military" by Bates Gill and Michael O'Hanlon in your Summer 1999 issue misleads. It sets up the dubious straw man claim that China's strategic ambitions significantly challenge the United States and its allies in East Asia, which the authors then demolish with the title's "hollow military" and with the derisory phrase "splashed missiles off the Taiwanese coast."

As for the meaning of the latter phrase, the facts are these: China used its modest military capabilities in the March 1996 Taiwan Strait exercise to affect the outcome of Taiwan's upcoming presidential election. As part of that effort, the Chinese fired M-9 ballistic missiles into the sea near Taiwan, exercised elements of eight infantry divisions along the mainland coast, deployed naval battle units in the western part of the Strait, flew mock combat missions with IL-76 and SU-27 aircraft, and deployed SA-10B SAMS.

But the Taiwan Strait exercise also shook up East Asia by provoking the rapid deployment of the Nimitz and Independence carrier battle groups to the area, reinforcing the U.S.-Japan strategic alliance and helping stimulate planning for the largest joint U.S.-Australia-New Zealand military exercise since World War II. Finally, it had the unintended consequence of energizing the independence movement on Taiwan. None of these reactions could have been welcome to Beijing's leaders.

It is of course very much in the U.S. national interest that Beijing and Taipei "heal the wound" between them, and the sooner the better. This would go some distance toward stabilizing an unstable East Asia that is undergoing revolutionary transformations, and that is too heavy with military capabilities, including nuclear weapons and precision-guided missiles. But the question is: heal the wound on what terms? The United States can and must play a constructive role, but not on the basis of setting up and demolishing straw men before we even start.

Robert F. Ellsworth

Washington, DC

The Gill-O'Hanlon article dismisses China as a military power for at least twenty years.

Despite China's outmoded military, it closed the Taiwan Strait in 1996 when it fired missiles in protest of Taiwan's first direct presidential elections. The United States would not tolerate a similar action, say, from Iran in the Persian Gulf. This different...

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