Beijing growing restless over Taiwan

One reason for Beijing's sudden new threatening talk about Taiwan is an analysis at the highest echelons of government here that Taiwan is indeed rapidly consolidating a separate identity in a manner and at a speed that is impossible for Beijing to reverse. Chen's victory on March 20 was a wake up call here. That both major parties in Taiwan pushed a pro-Taiwan identity message contradicted years of party rhetoric that pro-Taiwan feelings were limited to a small group of disgruntled dissidents. Even Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's incoming leader, stated after a controversial trip to the island this month that "people in Taiwan have a stronger self-identification as Taiwanese" than in 1992.

Some analysts feel China's military exercises, aggressive media, and pointed diplomatic campaigns are all a "safety valve" for internal pressures among party leaders who have long felt they must "deliver" Taiwan, as one put it.

One Eurasian diplomat argues that Beijing's current threats are a "theater play" that gives China great leverage on the cross-straits issue, at little actual cost.

Some longtime China watchers feel the Taiwan saber rattling is already subsiding.

Either way, hard-line elements in Beijing are now being allowed to put out as party line a message that months back would seem excessive: Yan Xuetong, Tsinghua University professor and currently the most quotable of the "attack Taiwan" school of thinking, has been making statements to the effect that it is better to attack Taiwan sooner, before it achieves a revised constitution and arguably more legitimacy. He suggests an attack date prior to 2008, as a military act in that time frame is more "controllable and local."

Hong Kong newspapers have reported, citing sources in the PLA, that Chinese military strategists believe their attack force will eclipse Taiwan's ability to resist, in a year or two.

Indeed, while much of the imagery surrounding a Chinese attack on Taiwan has depicted missile attacks from the Fujian coastline that would turn Taipei into a smoking wreck, Chinese experts now speak of small surgical strikes that would force the island to its knees quickly and with minimum damage. David Shambaugh, a PLA expert with George Washington University in D.C., recently told foreign journalists here that the PLA has been studying the US operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. New scenarios are being contemplated that some Chinese generals argue could be conducted within an imagined scale of acceptability.

• Tomorrow: Schools of thought on whether China would attack Taiwan.

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