Looking seaward through a mist on the Xiamen coastline one can just make out the shape of Taiwanese territory, the Jinmen Islands. Here, the proximity of Taiwan, China's main object of desire, is palpable. Fishermen from Jinmen often ply their boats in Chinese waters and dock at the port of Xiamen to sell their catch.

The Fujian coast is the closest point to Taiwan from the mainland, and here is where People's Liberation Army missiles point out across the Taiwan Straits, targeting Taipei. Here is where any attack of the kind threatened by an PLA general this week in Beijing, would originate. A huge sign in characters facing Jinman reads "One Country - Two Systems," China's formula for unification with what it calls the renegade island.

Beijing's threat on Wednesday to attack Taiwan is the first of such rhetoric heard from China in nearly three years. Maj. Gen. Wang Zaixi of the Taiwan Affairs Office said that "the use of force may be unavoidable" if Taipei were to continue its efforts at formal independence, such as holding a proposed 2006 referendum to change Taiwan's current Constitution.

Thursday, Taiwanese officials responded to the threats. "We can't tolerate interference with our internal affairs by any undemocratic countries," stated a cabinet spokesperson, Lin Chia-lung.

The newly martial rhetoric by Beijing was seen by analysts as a mild but clear early-warning shot to the world community, specifically the United States, that it won't let Taiwan consider itself a normal nation. The Bush administration has been quietly stepping up efforts to arm and support Taipei, even while continuing to denounce efforts by Taiwan to force any subject as sensitive as independence on the China's communist rulers.

"I don't think this means war is anywhere on the immediate horizon," says one Western analyst in Beijing. "But it means that China is getting a little worried about [Taiwanese President] Chen Shui-bian, and may not feel like remaining quiet indefinitely."

Chinese threats also show that - like the Bush administration's often ill-concealed splits between Pentagon hawks and State Department moderates - China has its own various schools of thinking about how to deal with sensitive foreign policy subjects.

General Wang's comments were made at a symposium and reported in the English-language China Daily, though not in the Chinese press. They came as Asst. Secretary of State James Kelly was in Beijing to discuss the upcoming six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program - and ahead of Premier Wen Jiabao's first visit to Washington in a few weeks.

For the past three years, China has adopted a "soft offensive" on the Taiwan question, avoiding the fiery rhetoric of the past, and hoping that economic integration will move the two sides of the strait inexorably into each other's embrace.

Page: 1 | 2