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China drill before Taiwan poll
EFL: Taiwan has accused Beijing of intimidation, after China announced it would stage naval drills with France in the run-up to Taiwanâs elections. The official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, said they would be Chinaâs biggest ever joint military exercises with a foreign power. But the agency made no link between the exercises off the port of Qingdao and the elections this Saturday. No connection at all, nope, nope. China has a history of flexing its military muscles just before Taiwan goes to the polls. It has also been especially critical of Taiwanâs first-ever referendum, also being held on Saturday, which Beijing views as a provocative step towards independence. Beijing views everything as a provocative step "If this weekâs planned exercises are as large as those China held in 1996 they will clearly amount to an attempt to intimidate Taiwanâs voters," Joseph Wu, deputy secretary general to Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, told BBC News Online. I donât think the Taiwanese are as easy to intimidate as the Spanish. "This will be Chinaâs most comprehensive naval exercise with any foreign navy," said Xinhua, quoting Ju Xinchun, captain of the Chinese guided missile destroyer, Harbin. China held its first ever joint naval exercises last year, when it conducted separate drills with both Pakistan and India. This will be its first exercise on the high seas with a major Western power, said Xinhua. Major power? I thought they were exercising with France? The French Goverment confirmed the exercises but denied there was any significance in their scale or timing. "They are part of the regional cooperation between the two navies, which was expanded after last yearâs visit to France by Chinese President Hu Jintao," said a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry in Paris. Demonstrating French arms, hoping for a sale. Just when was the last French naval victory, the seventeen hundreds? French warships - including the French anti-submarine warfare destroyer Latouche-Treville and light frigate Commandant Birotplan - will carry out joint search-and-rescue exercises and other drills with the North China Sea Fleet of the Peopleâs Liberation Army. Chinese missile tests immediately before Taiwanâs first direct presidential elections eight years ago prompted the US to send two aircraft-carrier battle groups to the area, in its biggest military deployment in the region since the Vietnam War. The US will be annoyed with both sides taking part in this weekâs exercises, say analysts. "The timing is very insensitive - it could not be worse," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a senior China specialist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. "This is going to create additional tensions - both between Taiwan and China and between the United States and France," he told BBC News Online. Just keep digging, Jacques. Taiwan suspended high-level government contacts with France earlier this year after French President Jacques Chirac sided with China in opposing President Chenâs plan to hold a referendum on missile defence. France has also drawn criticism from both Washington and Taipei by spearheading moves to lift a European Union ban on arms sales to China, imposed in the wake of the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Posted by: Steve 2004-03-15 |
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