China Up in Arms Over US Deal With Taiwan

(Feb. 1) -- Relations between China and the United States -- strained in recent weeks by the cyber attack on Google and differing approaches to Iran -- hit a new low this weekend, with Chinese officials warning that the U.S. sale of $6.3 billion worth of arms to Taiwan could damage relations between the two countries.

The proposed deal -- which includes anti-missile systems, Black Hawk helicopters, minesweeping ships and communications gear -- was condemned Sunday by China's foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, who said the Obama administration had ignored repeated requests to halt the sale. The U.S. should "truly respect China's core interests and major concerns, and immediately rescind the mistaken decision to sell arms to Taiwan, and stop selling arms to Taiwan to avoid damaging broader China-U.S. relations," Yang said.

China has long opposed sales of military gear to Taiwan, which has been ruled by a separate government since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 but is regarded by Beijing as part of its territory. The United States, for its part, is bound under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 "to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character."

Despite U.S. attempts to reassure the People's Republic that the new equipment does not pose a threat to the mainland -- requests by Taiwan for eight submarines and 66 F-16 fighters were declined -- China's state media has declared that the sale must be punished. "It's time the U.S. was made to feel the heat for the continuing arms sales to Taiwan," said The Global Times, the Communist Party's English-language propaganda mouthpiece.

How it will apply that heat is slowly becoming clear. The country announced late last week that it was suspending a military exchange program with the U.S. That's not an unusual reaction from Beijing, which similarly put the program on ice when President George W. Bush authorized a separate weapons package for Taiwan in 2008. More unexpected was the announcement that it would also slap unspecified sanctions on firms connected to the deal, such as Boeing, Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin.

There are likely to be further repercussions. On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned Beijing that it would face "economic insecurity and diplomatic isolation" if it failed to support new international sanctions against Iran at the United Nations Security Council. But if China wants to display its displeasure at the Taiwan deal, it might decide to stop co-operating at the U.N., scuppering America's attempt to pressure Tehran into abandoning its nuclear ambitions.

The official Xinhua news agency hinted this weekend that China could start to block diplomatic efforts, saying the sales "will cause seriously negative effects on China-U.S. exchanges and co-operation in important areas, and ultimately will lead to consequences that neither side wishes to see."

A commentary in the state-run China Daily was blunter still: "A message has to be sent: From now on, the U.S. shall not expect cooperation from China on a wide range of major regional and international issues. If you don't care about our interests, why should we care about yours?"

For China, in fact, this spat arrives at a highly convenient time. The country has never supported tough action against Iran, which supplies 15 percent of its oil. Now it can blame the U.S.-Taiwan deal, which has been in the works since 2001, instead of its own hunger for energy as the reason it won't back sanctions at the U.N. China looks "to Iran as a major source of future oil supplies," James Placke, a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates who specializes in the Middle East, told CNN last week. "They'd have to go through a substantial policy reversal, and I'd be surprised if they did that."