Dear Editor:

I very much enjoyed reading Sinorama's October 1998 cover story on the military situation in the Taiwan Strait. Many significant issues and strategies were well covered.

Professor Chung Chien has suggested that the most likely form of future PRC military action would be a "paralyzing" rapid and bloodless strategy, such as a long-distance blockade. This is a well-considered scenario, which has been discussed many times. However, the PRC military leadership must know that even a long-distance blockade could easily turn into a drawn-out and very bloody shooting war if ROC forces attempted to use counter-blockade measures, thus leading to an ever-increasing spiral of "graduated responses" until one side either backed down or won.

Furthermore, a shipping blockade affecting international trade is sure to bring third parties into the conflict, again with an extremely adverse reaction from the international community. Moreover, the term "blockade" is one form of action specifically listed in the Taiwan Relations Act which would be of "grave concern" to the United States and could provoke a US military response, depending, of course, on the internal political situation in the US at the time.

While the ROC must maintain a military force which provides a sufficient self-defense capability to cover potential military eventualities and to deter aggression, the real threat to Taiwan is not military, but economic, and lies in Taiwan's ever-growing dependence on business relations with mainland China.

Here is another scenario: At an appropriate time of Beijing's choosing, the Communist government simply makes an announcement that it has determined that the Taiwan side has failed to negotiate reunification in good faith. Consequently, the government in Beijing takes the following actions:

1. It "temporarily" halts all trade between Taiwan and the mainland, pending review of customs procedures;

2. It "temporarily" closes all Taiwan manufacturing and investment projects on the mainland, pending review of potential environmental or administrative violations, including possible bribery of mainland government officials when the investments were established; and

3. It "temporarily" sends all Taiwan businessmen home, pending review of their visa status.

Such actions would leave Taiwan-invested factories and offices to the tender mercies of "looters," whether they be the mainland employees or the mainland joint-venture partners. This is the real rapid and bloodless "paralyzing" strategy for which the ROC needs to prepare.

Editor's reply: With regard to the possibility noted in the reader's letter of economic war against Taiwan by the mainland, Wu Hui-lin of the Chung Hua Institution for Economic Research says that, given the current state to which the PRC has developed, it is unlikely to be able to use economic blackmail against Taiwan. If the PRC confiscates Taiwanese property in the mainland and bans further Taiwanese investment there, the "demonstration effect" will scare off other foreign investors. Taiwanese investment in the PRC is a win-win situation, and cutting it off would harm both sides, not just Taiwan. Lin Chong-pin, vice-chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, adds that the PRC is following a two-track policy-closed in politics, open in economics. Now that the economic system has been opened up, it would be difficult to close it again.