Dr Kay Möller
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin
China and East Asia
Paper prepared for GCSP 18th International Training Course in Security Policy, Geneva, 15 June 2004
In the literature, the term "East Asia" is being used differently. To me it would mean Northeast and Southeast Asia, but for the purposes of this presentation I shall concentrate on the Northeast Asian region between Tokyo and Hong Kong, Peking and Taipei. The obvious link to the Southeast Asian security complex is provided by China itself and its territorial claims to the South China Sea. Whereas this issue has been of concern to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Asean has not been able to address Northeast Asian issues to any significant extent.
Contrasting with Southeast Asia, the Northeast Asian security complex remains characterised by latent interstate rather than intrastate conflict with the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait providing the settings, in international legal terms, for two unfinished civil wars. The US maintains a forward based military presence of about 90,000 with some 47,000 in Japan, 37,000 in Korea (12,500 of which could be withdrawn by the end of next year), and the rest in Alaska, on Hawaii, on Guam, and at sea. Legal arrangements apart, a strategic realignement here seems likely in the not too distant future, given rising anti-Americanism in the Republic of Korea, Seoul's increased ability to defend itself, and the US deployment's "hostage" role in what need not remain a stable military context. Furthermore, since the Bush Jr. administration's coming into office, Japan has been promoted to "cornerstone" of Washington's Pacific strategy, a role that Tokyo first hesitantly and then actively assumed with frigates dispatched to the Arabian Sea, up to one thousand construction soldiers sent to Iraq, and a lively domestic debate regarding future amendments to the 1947 "peace constitution" that would be designed to enable Japan to participate in activities of collective defence. The latter would also concern a programme jointly launched with the US in 1998 to jointly develop and maintain a regional missile shield.
Northeast Asia has also been the scene of a regional arms race, mostly driven by China and Taiwan, and the possible scene for the horizontal and vertical proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, mostly driven by North Korea. During the decade from 1992 to 2003, regional defence expenditure increased by 22 per cent against a world trend of 3 per cent. Whereas it remains unlikely that the PRC could militarily challenge the US anytime soon, it has been preparing for asymmetric defence by importing hightech weapons from Russia with a view to a Taiwan Strait scenario. China's official defence budget has witnessed double digit-growth in most recent years to reach about US$ 25 billion in 2004, and real spending is believed to havesurpassed the Japanese budget of about US$ 46 billion, although Japan itself has been investing in a rudimentary force projection capability and could rapidly expand on this should circumstances require. Taiwan, however, seems to be slowly losing the race for mainly financial reasons, and the Pentagon has been concerned that it would be difficult, in case of a PRC surprise attack, to come to the island's rescue sufficiently fast. At the same time, the Bush Jr. administration has substituted what could almost be termed "strategic clarity" for the previous "strategic ambiguity" in the Taiwan Strait and has strengthened its military relationship with Taipei. For domestic political reasons alone, it is almost inconceivable that Washington could abandon the island in case of armed conflict.