In Rebuke of Taiwan, China Raises Specter of Military Clash

China’s state-run media said Wednesday that Taiwan faces a greater risk of military confrontation with the mainland after comments by the island’s leader supporting the idea of a referendum on independence.

“We must not delude ourselves that the separatists [in Taiwan] will abandon their pro-independence pursuit overnight,” said a commentary by an unidentified military source in the China Daily. “If we want to strive for peace, we have to be fully prepared for military action.”

The source stressed that China seeks peaceful reunification of Taiwan and the mainland, but added that “peace will have to be safeguarded and won through the use of force” if “radical” pro-independence moves take place on the island.

At the same time, the government of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian canceled a military drill planned for next week to avoid “misunderstandings,” a spokesman in Taipei, the island’ s capital, told reporters.

The bellicose rhetoric out of Beijing, though not unusual in the war of words across the Taiwan Strait, was the harshest in the current clash between the two archrivals.

Chen surprised many observers with remarks over the weekend that expressed support for allowing Taiwan’s 23 million residents to decide whether the island should pursue statehood. He told a group of pro-independence supporters that in reality, there already exists “one country on each side” of the roughly 90-mile-wide Taiwan Strait.

Chen’s Democratic Progressive Party advocates independence for Taiwan, a former military dictatorship that has transformed itself into one of Asia’s most freewheeling democracies.

But upon his surprise election two years ago, Chen promised not to do anything to provoke the mainland. He has also made some conciliatory overtures.

Though still suspicious of his intentions, Beijing responded cautiously, and some small progress seemed possible.

Now, Chen’s government is trying to contain the furor sparked by his latest comments, which it says were misreported, over-analyzed and blown out of proportion.

On Tuesday, Chen described his remarks as a “statement of [Taiwan’s] sovereignty and parity” with China, but he refrained from calling the island a separate nation.

The Chinese government’s reaction so far has been sharp but less than what might have been expected. On Monday, it issued an almost perfunctory statement warning Chen of “disaster” if he continued down the road to Taiwanese independence.

Even Wednesday’s rhetoric appeared only in the China Daily, an English-language newspaper read mostly by foreigners, and on the People’s Daily English Web site, not its national Chinese print edition. A separate editorial carried by several mainstream Chinese newspapers blasted Chen for being provocative, but it did not include any military threat.

The Communist regime here makes such threats whenever it is displeased with moves by Taiwan or when it tries to influence events on the island, such as the election that brought Chen to power.

China watchers are accustomed to periodic statements from Beijing reserving the right to use force to recapture Taiwan, which it considers Chinese territory. China’s defense minister, Gen. Chi Haotian, made such a declaration on the nation’s Army Day, two days before Chen’s remarks.

Whether the current denunciation of Chen develops into the same sustained campaign China mounted against his predecessor remains to be seen.

Three years ago, then-Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui angered Beijing by suggesting that the two sides deal with each other on a “state-to-state” basis.

Chen has dropped that formulation. However, he has also refused to accept China’s assertion that Taiwan and the mainland belong to a single country. The two have been governed separately since the Communist takeover of China in 1949.

Polls on the island consistently indicate that the majority of residents prefer the status quo, neither unification with China nor independence from it.