China, in About-Face, Plans More War Games

China on Friday announced an end to missile tests in the Taiwan Strait but added to tensions in the region by revealing that new ground, sea and air exercises near the mainland will begin Monday and last through next week’s presidential election in Taiwan.

The announcement of the new exercises, scheduled for March 18-25 in the mainland-held Haitan island group off the coast of Fujian province, came a day after China appeared to be pulling back from its campaign of military intimidation before Taiwan’s first direct presidential vote.

“This amounts to an escalation of their military exercises with the intention of intimidating Taiwan,” commented Tai Ming Cheung, a Hong Kong-based expert on the People’s Liberation Army. “The primary purpose is to show that they are capable of taking Taiwan territory. Because of the proximity of Taiwan-held islands, I would not rule out some operation there.”

Chinese state television accompanied its report on the new exercises with stridently patriotic film footage of four M-9 missiles launched in the past week to targets off the Taiwanese coast.

“Fire! Fire!” shouted officers of the 2nd Artillery Force as the film showed a gleaming white missile rising into the night sky.

“Following a great roar and a long tongue of flame,” an announcer intoned, “a ground-to-ground missile goes aloft and flies over the mountains toward its predetermined target. The troops that fired the missiles quickly leave the launch site and disappear into the dark night.”

The five-minute telecast was followed by the reading of an editorial from today’s editions of the People’s Daily and the Liberation Army Daily newspapers condemning the March 23 presidential election and attacking Taiwan’s President Lee Teng-hui as a secret advocate of independence for Taiwan.

“If Lee Teng-hui thinks that under the cloak of a ‘popularly elected president’ he can open a market for the so-called ‘Taiwan Sovereignty Independence,’ he is doomed to complete failure,” the editorial stated.

Broadcast across China on the national evening news, the telecast was also aimed at Taiwan’s television audience. The island’s television stations, including an expanding cable network, regularly monitor and rebroadcast footage from the mainland.

In military and propaganda terms, the announcement was a setback to the atmosphere of reduced tensions that had prevailed here in recent days.

On Thursday, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said naval and air military exercises now underway in the open sea off Taiwan would end as scheduled Wednesday. Pentagon officials in Washington said they had received assurances from Beijing that China had no plans to invade Taiwanese territory.

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The new military exercise zone detailed by the official New China News Agency does not include any of the offshore islands held by Taiwan but falls within 25 miles of the tiny Taiwanese-held island of Wuchiu, 75 miles southeast of the Fujian province capital, Fuzhou.

Foreign military experts said the exercises are likely to include mock amphibious landings.

Paul Godwin, a China military specialist with the National Defense University in Washington, said Friday that the new wave of military exercises can be interpreted as a reaction by Beijing to the Clinton administration decision to send two aircraft carrier battle groups into the area.

The U.S. carrier Independence is positioned 100 miles off the eastern coast of Taiwan to monitor the Chinese military exercises. Twice each day, F-14 and F-18 aircraft fly from the carrier to observation positions above the Taiwan Strait. A second carrier, the Nimitz, is scheduled to arrive in the area next week.

“With the United States putting a second carrier group in the area,” Godwin said, “the Chinese felt compelled to react, tit for tat. They couldn’t be seen as backing down to what they view as hegemonic politics. These exercises were their tit to our tat. Now my concern is that there is some pressure to steam one of the carriers through the strait, thereby prompting another Chinese response.”

Diplomats in Beijing report a new wave of anti-American sentiment in China, particularly in the military.

One Western diplomat described a particularly confusing time in the Chinese capital, with the Chinese military sending its U.S. counterparts mixed signals.

“On the one hand, we are at the Great Hall of the People drinking mai tais and eating sea slugs with a senior military official--while missiles are raining down near Taiwan,” the diplomat said.

Virulent anti-American rhetoric, he said, is mixed with entreaties for more military exchanges between the two countries.

How the current situation plays out, the diplomat said, may depend on how Lee acts after his anticipated victory in the upcoming vote. “Lee Teng-hui, frankly, can play a pivotal role in this,” the diplomat said. “If he can celebrate his victory without gloating . . . then China may be ready to end these exercises.”