Taiwan Getting New U.S. Arms to Offset China

Taiwan, worried about what it views as an increased threat from China’s People’s Liberation Army, has quietly been obtaining sophisticated new military equipment and technology from the United States.

In recent months, over China’s objections, the Bush Administration has cleared the way for the sale of new American-made Cobra attack helicopters it previously had denied to the Nationalist regime.

Taiwan military officials also are preparing to buy new American engines for their fighter planes and advanced electronic-warfare technology for their naval frigates.

And Taiwan officials have served notice that they may soon revive a decade-old effort to buy American F-16 jet aircraft, particularly if China succeeds in obtaining modern fighter planes from the Soviet Union.

The U.S. sales provide much-needed revenue to American defense industries. “All our defense contractors are hurting, and Taiwan can pay top dollar for what we’re giving,” says June Teufel Dreyer, a specialist on the Taiwan military at the University of Miami.

At the same time, the sales fuel the continuing arms race across the Taiwan Strait and raise the prospect of touching off a major new dispute between the Bush Administration and China.

U.S. officials maintain that recent American military sales to Taiwan are unexceptional and remain within limits negotiated in a 1982 accord between the Ronald Reagan Administration and China. The United States promised it would hold arms sales to Taiwan at the 1982 level of about $700 million a year and promised to gradually, over an indefinite period, phase them out.

“There’s been absolutely no change in (U.S.) policy,” insisted one Bush Administration official.

But Chinese officials contend that recent American sales violate the 1982 accord.

“The tension across the Taiwan Strait has been much decreased,” said Xiao Houde, counselor at the Chinese Embassy in Washington. “So we wonder why, at this time, the United States still provides Taiwan with such advanced weaponry? We think this is not conducive to peace and stability in the region.”

Administration officials ac knowledge that the U.S. relationship with China has cooled since the 1989 upheavals at Tian An Men Square. As a result, the United States may be less fearful of offending China through new arms sales to Taiwan than it was in the 1980s.

Xiao said that in September, China went to the State Department to object to the sale of the new attack helicopters to Taiwan, and that Chinese diplomats recently began making inquiries to State Department officials about Taiwan’s efforts to buy new American jet fighters.

A Bush Administration official acknowledged that China made a demarche, or diplomatic protest, over the helicopter sale this fall. But he and other Administration officials characterize China’s protests as low-keyed and routine.

Taiwan officials refuse to discuss their purchases of weapons from the United States. A spokesman for the Coordination Council for North American Affairs (CCNAA), Taiwan’s unofficial embassy in Washington, declined a Times request for an interview on the U.S. arms sales, saying the subject is too sensitive.

“The history is that the less Taiwan says about its arms purchases from the United States, the better it is for all concerned,” one Pentagon official asserted. “Major demarches (protests) from China are something they want to avoid.”

In 1979, the United States recognized Beijing, broke off formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan’s Nationalist regime and abrogated a U.S. defense treaty with the nation. Soon afterward, however, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which commits the United States to continue supplying arms for Taiwan’s defense. The 1982 agreement with China set some limits on these U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

U.S. government analysts say Taiwan has become increasingly worried that its security could be undermined by a series of changing alignments in Asia, such as the improving ties between China and the Soviet Union and between China and Vietnam.

“Taiwan is uneasy. This nice bipolar world of the Cold War is over,” said one U.S. official. “From Taiwan, you look across the straits and you see Sino-Soviet relations relaxing. Where are the Chinese going to put those troops that were stationed along the northern borders? You look south, and the Chinese and Vietnamese are talking. Where are those Chinese troops in the south going to go?”

Last August, during a regular annual review of arms sales to Taiwan, the Bush Administration cleared the way for the sale of the sophisticated Cobra attack helicopters that Taiwan had for years been unable to get, Pentagon officials say.

“The Cobras five years ago didn’t seem to make much military sense. Today, given changes in the island, organization of the Taiwan military, whatever, it makes more sense now,” explained one U.S. official. “ . . . They are the sort of weapons that sound high-profile, but they don’t really have any capability against China, and in that sense aren’t all that provocative.”

Chinese officials disagree. “This is a new type of helicopter, an advanced type,” said Xiao. “The Taiwan authorities have never had this kind of helicopter. So they upgraded in quality. We think this is a violation of the principles” of China’s 1982 agreement with the Reagan Administration.

The Chinese diplomat said his government has also complained to the United States about recent American sales of early-warning planes and observation helicopters to Taiwan.

The trade newspaper Defense News, which first disclosed the U.S. approval for the attack helicopters, said Taiwan has started negotiations with Bell Helicopter Textron to buy at least 24 helicopters in what it said would be a multibillion-dollar deal.

Officials at Bell Helicopter Textron declined to comment. “Anything involving Taiwan we can’t discuss,” said a spokesman at the company’s Ft. Worth headquarters.

In the early and mid-1980s, Taiwan tried repeatedly to persuade the United States to let it buy sophisticated F-16 jet fighters. But the Reagan Administration rebuffed these requests. Instead, Taiwan decided to develop its own plane with help from American companies. The plane will not be in full production for three to four more years.

U.S. defense experts say that China’s air force now has only antiquated planes. One Pentagon specialist said China’s best plane, the F-8, is “a basically middle-1960s-quality aircraft, underpowered, overweight and not particularly good.” Last spring, China canceled a deal with the Grumman Corp. to upgrade the F-8 with modern electronics.

But this fall, Chinese officials began talking to the Soviet Union about buying a modern Soviet fighter, the SU-27.