Taiwanese Takeout

...That "occasionally" is surely today...

...Perhaps threatening to blast Taiwan out of the water is the kind of direction he had in mind...

...The last time a Clinton administration official was asked what Washington would do if China attacked Taiwan, assistant secretary of defense Joseph Nye, in Peking last November, replied, "We don't know and you don't know...

...wow Q. What is a dollar...

...ill ON Átinl known outside the White House—and the Freeman residence in Washington, D.C...

...policy—the law of the land, in this case—as deeming any intimidation of Taiwan by force "a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States...

...ambassador to China, comments bitterly, "It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous...

...Translation: If America steps in, we'll nuke you...

...Third, both White House and State Department officials mouth the Nixon-era rhetoric of U.S.-China relations as if nothing in China or the world has changed since then...

...For the answers to these questions and more, Call: Southwest International Trading at 1-800-240-2646 for your free information pack...

...The word can mean virtually anything, and it is hardly a consolation that another trendy phrase administration officials are touting to describe their stumbling response to China's growing international thuggishness is "strategic ambiguity...

...Commerce Secretary Ron Brown says, "Being commercially engaged with China gives us an opportunity to have some influence, some impact on the direction that China takes...

...The second, or more subtly formed, was that as China modernized economically and kept talking about its "open door" to the world, the U.S...

...Only militaristic nationalism, expansion of China's territorial boundaries like a lurid tongue down the littorals of the South China Sea, and planting the gold-starred banner on the "compatriot" soil of Taiwan...

...As for Foggy Bottom, it frets that the imposition of economic sanctions will confirm Chinese beliefs that we are trying to "contain" them...

...Is it not possible that, with a politically unsure central leadership in Peking waiting for Deng Xiaoping to die and needful of national legitimacy, the rhetoric of nationalistic military threats against Taiwan runs a daily growing risk of becoming self-fulfilling...

...It defines U.S...

...Second, in responding to these second-level areas of tension with China, the administration is completely at odds with itself...

...Ambiguous it certainly is, but it is about as strategic as walking through a high-crime neighborhood with a sign that says, "If mugged, I may fight back, but then again, I may not...

...As if these annoyances were not sufficient, China has quite deliberately continued to flout commitments made to the U.S...

...Washington also agreed never to promote a de facto Taiwan independence policy...

...This new Chinese nationalism is especially dangerous because it is both populist and military-led...

...Early in January the People's Daily reported that officers and ordinary soldiers in the "theater" were clamoring for combat assignments, arguing, "If the Chinese PLA cannot ensure the nation's territorial integrity, how can they fight foreign enemies...

...Very clearly...

...Congressional meddling in U.S...

...11111111.110H iliA0011t The Coming U.S.-China Showdown When the story was leaked to the New York Times towards the end of January, it was calculated to shock...

...Finally there was Mao Tse-tung's assurance to Nixon during their Peking meeting that Taiwan was "not important" as an issue and that reunification with it could take as long as loo years...

...What is left to the Communists in their wheezing search for a reason to rule...

...IMW Q. How can I protect my financial future...

...Three of the intellectual foundations of U.S.China policy since Nixon's 1972 visit have long since crumbled...

...What is meant by "engagement...

...And very soon...

...policy towards Taiwan was based on "the three communiqués," meaning the Shanghai communiqué of 1972, after President Nixon's historic visit, the 1978 Joint communiqué on the establishment of U.S.-China diplomatic relations, and the 1982 U.S.-China communiqué on arms sales to Taiwan...

...James Lilley, who succeeded Lord as U.S...

...The Clinton White House, if it had the intestinal fortitude, could get this point across with a judicious deployment of the Seventh Fleet around Taiwan...

...Would that anyone in China actually believed that...

...The TRA is not a security treaty, but it comes close...

...U.S.-China relations have been almost continuously bumpy since 1989, when the Tiananmen Square massacre made it clear to all Americans that Peking's view of human life and political decency was totally alien to the sensibilities, not just of most Americans, but most of the world as well...

...1'01112 011 China's Military Loves Bill Perry 24 April 1996 • The American Spectator...

...How to do so...

...Foreign policy has never been Bill Clinton's strong suit...

...Last October, when China was conducting its fourth of the "serial war games" —the first one began with missile firings off Taiwan's coast in July—the military set up in Nanjing a "Military Headquarters for Targeting Taiwan...

...wow Q. What does the falling dollar mean...

...The period leading up to an actual marriage...

...would do nothing in response because, one official sneeringly observed, America's leaders "care more about Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan...

...Wars have a nasty habit of self-ignition when the heat of words reaches critical temperature...

...foreign policy is often unhelpful, but just occasionally it reminds administrations of principles of integrity and justice that tap-dancing executive branch negotiators would sometimes rather forget...

...has received from any foreign state since Saddam Hussein's tantrums more than five years ago, the Clinton administration's response has been rambling, confused—and utterly dangerous...

...Does it mean the same as in 1920...

...These military provocations by Peking would then force the U.S...

...The first and overriding problem regarding this Taiwan situation is that it runs the risk of being mixed up with other U.S.-China problems that are serious but not as dangerous as actual hostilities...

...These points are undoubtedly known to State Department analysts, but their significance as a guide to action seems to have escaped the administration altogether...

...would eventually end arms sales to Taiwan...

...The capitalist experiment has dismantled state socialism to such an extent that Marxist-Leninist and Maoist thought are now morally bankrupt...

...What makes such reports so alarming is that China's president, Jiang Zemin, was reported to have been broadly rebuked by senior and retired military officers last June for failing to prevent Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's visit to Cornell University, the event that precipitated China's belligerence since then...

...China has been able to keep up its barrage of annoyances on bilateral U.S.- China issues with impunity for one reason: no one in the White House or any other part of the U.S...

...than China's blatantly illegal exports of nuclear technology to Pakistan, or its cynical provision of naval cruise missiles to Iran...

...The American Spectator • April 1996worries brought up was not actual war with China but the nuisance-value of the crisis during the 1996 presidential election campaign...

...At a White House meeting January 19, one of the biggest DAVID AIKMAN, a former Time reporter in East Asia, is the author of Pacific Rim (Little, Brown...

...trade negotiator Mickey Kantor's demand for the imposition of sanctions on China's trade has been opposed by both the Commerce and State Departments for different reasons...

...China has repeatedly said that what it will do after this depends entirely on Lee...

...will do nothing...

...You've got to get the word across to them at some authoritative level that force is not an option," says former ambassador Lilley, whose tenure in China came during the chilly period from 1989 to 1991...

...By late February, some 150,000 PLA troops were estimated to be participating in war games around the coast of Fujian province...

...These variously committed the U.S...

...Though China's at times Stalinist behavior on human rights has remained a major irritant in relations between Washington and Peking—making Most Favored Nation trading status a cliffhanger issue each year until 1994—it's been less alarming for the U.S...

...First and foremost was the strategic threat of Soviet global power, which ended decisively in 1991 with the implosion of the Soviet Union...

...Call Today: 1-800-240-2646 the people on Taiwan and any danger to the interests of the United States arising therefrom...

...Most observers think it unlikely that China would actually make military moves against Taiwan proper before March 23, the date of Taiwan's presidential election...

...Chas Freeman, former assistant secretary of defense under Clinton, on a private visit to Peking last November, had been given a white-knuckle tour of Communist China's intentions towards Taiwan...

...Demands from arms control experts for the U.S...

...That was exploded in the gunfire in Peking's streets on June 4, 1989...

...There is virtually no dissent at all from the view, even among strongly pro-democratic Chinese,that the mainland is justified in taking any action it deems necessary to recover Taiwan...

...mow Q. How safe is your money today...

...Senior Chinese military and Communist Party officials told him flatly that China's armed forces had already been given authority to use force against Taiwan...

...Whatever it does, it must speak to China very quietly, very clearly, and above all with one voice...

...Furthermore, they added, the U.S...

...government seems to have had the slightest idea how to respond...

...What are we, a banana republic...

...Finally, the momentum of China's war rhetoric and actual preparations makes it sheer folly to assume that Peking is merely posturing...

...The act also commits the president "to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force, or other forms of coercion, that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan...

...not to "challenge" the Peking position that Taiwan is an integral part of China, expressed the expectation that the issue would be settled "peacefully," and promised that the U.S...

...to retaliate against nuclear proliferation with economic sanctions—mandated by Congress in the Arms Export Control Act of 1991 and the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994— have been met by the flaccid White House response that missiles shipped to Pakistan have not actually been taken out of their crates yet...

...milim Q. How will the national debt affect you...

...what Lake said in response to Freeman's report...

...As he was expected to, Freeman dutifully passed on these brutal threats to national security adviser Anthony Lake, and in the process the story leaked out in considerable detail...

...to crack down on piracy of U.S...

...Authorization for China's military to take the initiative was evidently agreed to by the Chinese politburo sometime last July or August...

...At the same time, the Nanjing Military Region was designated "the Nanjing theater," meaning "war theater...

...videos and CD's...

...But it could attack or lay siege to the off-shore islands of Quemoy and Matsu, harass Taiwan's shipping, or lob missiles into the sea on either side of Taiwan...

...China, he said, would be willing to sacrifice "millions of men and entire cities" to ensure China's unity...

...If we are to avoid the worst Taiwan Straits crisis since 1958, they need to be disabused of this idea...

...Clinton no doubt recalls that an earlier Taiwan Straits crisis, the Communist bombardment of Nationalist-held Quemoy Island in 1958, became an election issue in the famous Nixon-Kennedy debates of 196o...

...A military clash...

...aybe not yet, but in terms of political acuity, getting close...

...That kind of response certainly leads the Chinese to think they know—they think the U.S...

...04-1...

...wants "engagement" and not "confrontation"—confirming that the long sad slide of American foreign policy in the post–Cold War era has finally descended into mush-speak...

...would pretend to believe that this meant eventual democratization by the Communist regime...

...It isn't April 19 9 6 • The American Spectator It may be the last thing on his mind, but Bill Clinton will have to defend Taiwan against a reckless Peking regime...

...Peking's increasingly strident attitude towards Hong Kong, which it formally takes over in June 1997, indicates that the regime believes it's on something of an expansionist roll...

...But there are several factors that make his weakness in this domain particularly serious...

...How can Lord be so sure...

...There is also the matter of the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which requires the president "to inform the Congress promptly of any threat to the security or the social or economic system of 22 April 19 9 6 • The American Spectator Which Is Real ..1©f27( mew Q. What is the true purchasing power of money today...

...That soothing assurance has been overtaken by a development that not even Mao could have predicted...

...to decide whether to stand idly by or clamp down hard on Chinese militarism before it gets out of hand...

...21 Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord, speaking in February to an understandably worried Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, repeated the mantra that U.S...

...In the Senate hearings in February, Winston Lord asserted that "the PRC has no intention to initiate military action," a conclusion similarly made by administration analysts just 48 hours before China invaded Vietnam in 1978...

...But Lord also told the committee that in its relations with China the U.S...

...There were completed plans, they said, for Taiwan to be bombarded with con20 ventional missiles at the rate of one per day for 30 days...

...But in the face of the ugliest direct threat the U.S...