Bombshell from a sloppy media
Anyone who knows anything about the mainland knows that it is not just its current government but its people, too, who are ultra-sensitive over the Taiwan issue. They would fight to keep alive the hope of eventual union with the feisty island. And so, when a sensational story broke recently that the United States had plans for a massive show of naval power in the East China Sea, it was a true blockbuster.
In 1996, the mainland executed an ill-advised measure of gunboat and missile diplomacy in an effort to intimidate Taiwan's voters into not electing as their president Chen Shui-bian, whose party's most prominent platform was formal independence from the mainland. In response, a pair of US aircraft carrier groups was sent close to China to help calm the political waters.
This month, it was starting to look like 1996 all over again. Rumours began to circulate about a mammoth US military exercise off Taiwan, operation Summer Pulse, that would involve seven carrier groups - more than half the US carrier fleet. In effect, American naval forces would be shaking an enormous stick in Beijing's face, signalling the folly of military action over Taiwan. The sensational story was apparently first listed as fact on a Chinese-language website, then published in at
least two newspapers in Asia and two in the US, including the ordinarily cautious Los Angeles Times.
These accounts spawned a predictable firestorm in Asia about new US 'gunboat diplomacy' on various internet sites, as such an allegation should.
Beijing insists on ultimate sovereignty over Taiwan and argues that any western encouragement of separatism would undermine regional stability and delay a peaceful solution of the issue. Indeed, this one-China policy has been accepted by the US and most of the world. The Chinese government, thus, has a point. The proper task of modern global diplomacy is to discourage Beijing from ever attempting to establish sovereignty by force, and to deter Taiwan from acting in such a way that Beijing becomes convinced that the military option is its only hope for realising unification.
As it turns out, the seven-carriers-to-China story was not only inflammatory, it was also false. In fact, after the USS Ronald Reagan returns to port in San Diego early next month, only two carriers, not seven, will be afloat in Pacific waters, according to Captain John Singley, spokesman for the US Pacific Command in Hawaii.
The false story, whipped into a frenzy, upset many in the US military perhaps as much as the Chinese. For one thing, the Pacific Command has been working industriously since the 1996 cross-strait standoff to get to know its Chinese counterparts and develop a measure of mutual trust.
Second, rumours of a massive US military build-up (for which America does have the capability) only play into the hands of hawks in the People's Liberation Army, who beg the Chinese government for more money to buy more arms - which in turn plays into the hands of Taiwan's hawks. This, then, plays into the hands of anti-China circles in the US, which want more funding for more weapons - all of which delights American arms merchants.
In international relations and public diplomacy, the news media plays a critical role. It can prudently raise intelligent questions, or rashly raise international temperatures. The press owes it to world peace to behave more responsibly and not take its cues from sensational cyberspace sources.
War - or potential war - is a serious business, as the situation in Iraq today reminds us.
Tom Plate, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, is founder of the Asia-Pacific Media Network
Distributed by the UCLA Media Centre
