China Reportedly Increases Missiles Targeting Taiwan

Adding to already tense relations across the Taiwan Strait, China has apparently increased the number of missiles on its southern border aimed at Taiwan.

The Chinese government has deployed more than 120 ballistic missiles, and possibly as many as 200, on its side of the Taiwan Strait, sources said. The domestically made M-9 and M-11 missiles are easily capable of hitting the island that Beijing has considered a renegade province for half a century.

Analysts said the deployment--at least a doubling of the previous number of missiles massed on China’s southern coast--is sure to fuel calls in the U.S. for including Taiwan in an experimental defense-shield system now in development known as “theater missile defense,” or TMD. That would place further strains on Sino-U.S. relations.

The Clinton administration has proposed including only Japan and South Korea in such a defense shield, a need made more urgent, officials contend, by North Korea’s launch of what was believed to be a ballistic missile over Japan last summer. (North Korea said it was a satellite.) The proposed umbrella defense system, similar to the “Star Wars” proposals of the 1980s, relies on untested technology and is still years away from being developed, if ever.

Beijing has argued with increasing force that the proposed defense network is merely a way for the U.S. to ratchet up its military presence in Asia. And any plan to include Taiwan in such a strategy would represent a serious attack on China’s sovereignty claims over the island.

Chinese officials and military analysts also contend that a new arms race would result, engulfing not just Asia but other parts of the world.

“The Pentagon is making the argument that the Chinese are building up their missiles, and that’s why we need TMD,” said James Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist at the Rand Corp. in Washington. “The other way of looking at it is that this shows the Chinese government can [keep on] ramping up missile production, and therefore TMD is a bad idea.”