Military contacts likely to suffer if Beijing retaliates over US arms sales to Taiwan

China issues warning over US arms sales to Taiwan

BEIJING — Contacts with China’s military would likely be the first to suffer if Beijing moves to retaliate over upcoming U.S. arms sales to Taiwan — the latest in a flurry of disputes elevating tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu warned that the Obama administration risked damaging ties with China if it proceeds with the arms package deal, which is likely to include Black Hawk helicopters and Patriot missiles.

“Once again, we urge the U.S. side to recognize the sensitivity of weapon sales to Taiwan and its gravity,” Ma told reporters Tuesday at a regularly scheduled news conference. He said failure to halt the sales would “impair the larger interests of China-U.S cooperation.”

Ma’s comments were echoed Wednesday by the Cabinet’s Taiwan Affairs Office which handles contacts with Taiwan, considered by Beijing to be a breakaway province.

“Our stance of opposing arms sales to Taiwan by any country is consistent and clear,” spokesman Yang Yi said. “We feel that advancing the peaceful development of cross-strait relations is the only real way to benefit Taiwan’s peace and stability.”

Weapons sales to self-governing Taiwan is one of a string of sensitive issues roiling ties between China and the United States that have prompted pointed responses from Beijing.

Last week, China issued a sharp counterattack after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Internet censorship and called on China to investigate cyberattacks against Google. The search giant has threatened to pull out of the world’s most populous online market if Beijing doesn’t relax its Internet censorship.

On Tuesday, another government spokesman rebuked Washington for Clinton’s comments, saying they aimed to discredit China. An editorial in the official People’s Daily the same day accused U.S. politicians of using the issue to “meddle in other nations’ affairs on the one hand and to consolidate American hegemony in cyberspace on the other hand.”

Arms sales to Taiwan are mandated by a U.S. law requiring Washington to ensure Taiwan is capable of defending itself from Chinese threats, including the more than 1,000 ballistic missiles pointed at the island.

In 2008, China suspended most military dialogue with Washington after the Bush administration approved a $6.5 billion arms package to Taiwan that included guided missiles and attack helicopters.

China’s Defense Ministry warned in a statement earlier this month that arms sales “seriously damaged mutual trust between the militaries of China and the U.S. and create a major obstacle to improving and developing U.S.-China military relations.

The ministry said it “reserved the right to take further action,” but gave no specifics.

Among upcoming exchanges that could suffer: Gen. Chen Bingde, the Chinese military’s chief of the general staff, was due to visit the U.S., while U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, had planned to come to China.

Washington has sought to raise the profile and frequency of such visits, using them as the basis for expanded cooperation in practical areas such as joint rescue drills. The Pentagon also hopes to build trust with Beijing to convince the Communist government to reveal more about the aims of its massive military buildup.

Also potentially at risk are a planned exchange of visits this year by the heads of NASA and China’s national space program and a hoped-for revival of a bilateral dialogue on human rights.

Arms sale disputes also highlight Beijing’s complicated relationship with Taiwan, which split from the mainland amid civil war in 1949 and has in recent years forged an increasingly independent identity. The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 in order to normalize relations with Beijing, but remains Taipei’s closest ally and chief source of weapons.

Since the election of Taiwan’s China-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou in 2008, Beijing has played down its threat to use force to bring the island under its control, while pressing ahead with economic dialogue and easing its campaign to isolate the island internationally. Direct scheduled flights have opened, Chinese tourists can now visit Taiwan and a new round of talks on a free trade agreement began Tuesday in Beijing.

Such progress ought to be seen in Washington as a powerful argument against providing more weapons to Taiwan, Liu Jiangyong of Tsinghua University’s Institute of International Studies said Tuesday.

“Selling arms to Taiwan is a mistake that will bring negative effects to the development of the China-U.S. relations and shows the American government’s lack of strategic insight,” Liu said.