Hoping they won’t fire those 700 missiles today

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Getting to Taipei from Manila is a breeze. You board a jet at our airport, NAIA-1 – our flight yesterday afternoon was EVA Air – and in two hours you’re stepping off into the streamlined Chiang Kai-shek International Airport. Since my last visit here was 12 years ago (light years before "Meteor Garden"), I’m not surprised that this bustling air terminal was modernized three years ago.

In the old days, when I used to fly in and out of Taipei much more frequently, tough airport Customs officers and policemen would go through every item in your luggage when you arrived, and again go through the same rigid procedure of checking when you departed. Yesterday, they just smilingly waved us through.

This does not mean, of course, that the 23 million Taiwanese (yes, that’s how few, but rich, they are) are in a state of relaxation. They’re keeping a wary eye on the mainland, 100 miles away across the Taiwan Strait, where the People’s Liberation Army and the Navy are building up. The leadership in Beijing, while its top brass are on a charm offensive in other capitals of the region – even China’s President Hu Jin-tao is coming to Manila (April 23, I think), and Premier Wen Jiabao has just been making friendly deals in India – are threatening Taiwan with massive attack and invasion IF Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian and his even more high-profile, articulate Vice-President Annette Lu dare declare their tight little island an "independent" Taiwan .

The Communist government’s parliament in Beijing last March 16 formalized this threat by unanimously passing an Anti-Secession Law which literally gives the more than two million strong PLA – Army, Navy and Air Force – a blank check to attack Taiwan.

The new law authorizes the mainland’s military to utilize "non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect the nation’s sovereignty and territorial integrity" should "the Taiwan independence secessionist forces act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan’s secession from China…" et cetera.

China’s President Hu Jin-tao was quite specific in a statement the previous day: "We shall step up preparations for possible military struggle and enhance our capabilities to cope with crises, safeguard peace, prevent wars, and win wars if any."

How can anybody doubt Beijing’s growing ability to become the neighborhood bully? Even Japan’s military (euphemistically still called Self-Defense Forces) are increasingly worried and anti-Japanese riots have been rocking Beijing, Guangzhou (Canton) and Shenzen, showing that China, with a booming economy and a burgeoning appetite for imports of oil and materials needed to keep its factories going, is ready to assert itself as a power not only in Asia but in the world. It’s uncanny. In the same manner Imperial Japan in the 1930s to 1940s felt compelled to seize territory and control the seas in the region to assure itself of oil, food, raw materials and the "lifeblood" to keep going, the People’s Republic of China is beginning to think along similar lines – otherwise it won’t be able to maintain its spectacular growth rate of 8.7 percent per annum. Has history come full cycle?

How does this development concern us? Or threaten us?

One thing is sure. Here is this writer in vulnerable Taipei – a metropolis of six million (three million living in the city proper, another three million in the metropolitan region within a radius of 30 km). The airport is 42 kilometers away, a ride over a smooth expressway of 45 minutes. The hostile mainlanders have been warning that if the leaders in Taipei misbehave, they’ll unleash the 700 missiles zeroed in on Taiwan from their end. The missiles located in China’s southeastern coast, in Fujian for example, are beefed up by an additional 70 to 75 missiles a year.

Well, I hope till I get out of here a few days from now, nobody on the mainland with an itchy trigger, uh, missile-finger, will set any of them off.

Decades ago, as a more energetic journalist, I flew aboard a military C-47 to the outpost islands of Kinmen (Quemoy) and Matsu, from which you could see the Fujian (Fookien) coast. Our aircraft flew low, almost at wave level to avoid detection by mainland radar. We chose the "odd day" because, unless my recollection is wrong, the Red Chinese – as we used to call them before we got buddy-buddy with Beijing – shelled those fortified little isles every "even" day – in short, every other day.

Cannon shells are, naturally, to be feared. (We fortified our spirits when on Quemoy by drinking bottles of potent Kaoliang wine). However, a missile is something else – it blows up your entire island.

And this symbolizes the increasingly fearsome power of the fast-expanding People’s Liberation Army. According to published reports, a China versus Taiwan battle would be a terrible mismatch. Taiwan has an Army of only 200,000 men, a Navy of 45,000 (15,000 of them Marines), four submarines, 11 destroyers, 21 frigates, 59 missile craft and an air Force of 45,000 manning 479 combat aircraft. Taiwan, on the other hand, plane for plane has the most modern, computerized air force in the region.

In sharp contrast, China has an Army of 1.6 million, a Navy of 255,000 (counting 10,000 marines and 26,000 naval aviation complement), with 69 submarines, 21 destroyers, 42 frigates, 96 missile craft, and an Air Force of 400,000 men with 1,900 combat aircraft. Most of their military aircraft are obviously obsolescent, but Beijing has been streamlining swiftly, with Russian Sukhoi Su-27s (fighters) and Sukhoi Su-30s.

The Chinese, with the vast wealth they’ve accumulated in the past decade, have been buying weapons from the former Soviet "superpower" arsenal like eager kids let loose in a candy store. But they’re not kids. They’re Chinese with a resentful memory of having been pushed around in the Opium Wars by the Brits, suffered Western dominance and arrogance, and having been bloodied by Japan. The Rape of Nanjing by the brilliant young American historian Iris Chang – who surprisingly committed suicide a few months ago – remains a runaway bestseller in translation.

If the rulers in Beijing want to resurrect the hegemony of the Middle Kingdom, whose civilization they point out, dates back 5,000 years, then we all ought to take note – and react accordingly. I already know how we’ll react in Manila. We’ll probably kowtow. That’s an old Chinese word, which means grovel before a master.

On the other hand we may surprise ourselves, if ever push comes to shove. We might develop backbone instead of jawbone. We might even be able to combat the Islamic terrorists who’re rampaging in Mindanao and keeping us in Metro Manila, Luzon and the Visayas on our uneasy toes.

* * *

AND BY THE WAY… Now I know why United States Embassy Charge d’ Affaires Joseph Mussomeli spoke out of turn and talked too much about our permitting the terrorists to operate in Mindanao, warning that Mindanao could be "the next Afghanistan." To begin with, Joe was the same fellow who sort of undiplomatically criticized President GMA’s state of the nation address last year while everybody else seemed to be in simpering fashion applauding it (forgive him for he comes, if I’m not mistaken, from Boston). Perhaps he was emboldened this time because he’s shortly leaving for a new assignment – I believe in June. His next destination, I hear, will be Phnom Penh, Cambodia. That’s where the Cambodians went amok and staged a violent demonstration which culminated in the burning down of the Thai Embassy and the thrashing of a Thai hotel just because a popular Thai actress had been misquoted as making disparaging remarks about the Cambodians! If Mr. Mussomeli says the wrong thing over there, there’s no telling what the angry Khmers might do to him, the US Embassy, and any American institution like MacDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, or what else. Not having been there since the Killing Fields, I don’t know whether there’s a "Starbucks" or "Pizza Hut" to attack, too. Joe M. is very lucky Filipinos are more friendly – in fact too friendly to everybody, friend or foe.