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Ambassador
James Lilley spoke to a group of journalists from
his office in Washington, DC for approximately one hour.
The former American ambassador to Taiwan and later to China, James Lilley, said today that President-elect Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan faces enormous problems in putting together a coalition government before he takes office on May 20, not the least of which is what he called "coercive diplomacy" from China. Lilley, who just returned to Washington from observing the March 18 vote that Chen won by a small margin, said he saw Chen and Vice President-elect Annette Lu on election day and "they were very sober" about the prospect of taking office. "The whole thing hit them like a ton of bricks," Lilley said. Noting that Chen's Democratic Progressive Party has not held national office before, Lilley said it has few people with the experience to lead ministries such as foreign affairs, defense, and economics. Even so, he said, "Chen is a talented, driven, ambitious, and decent man" who has "a real opportunity to move Taiwan forward." Lilley served as Director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the unofficial U.S. embassy in Taipei, from 1982 to 1984 and then as ambassador in Beijing from 1989 to 1991. In a telephone briefing for journalists arranged by the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media at New York University, Lilley also made the following points:
Lilley, who is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, said the election in Taiwan demonstrated that "the democratic process works there." With its defeat, the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT) must go through a reform, he said, while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) seeks maturity. He said that China both lost and won in the Taiwan election. It lost because Chen, who "in many ways they tried to undermine," won decisively and fairly. China won because their nemesis, President Lee Teng-hui, has been forced to step down and the candidate Beijing favored, James Soong, got 36 percent of the vote. Although Beijing sought to paint Chen as one who would seek independence and thus cause war, Lilley said "Chen has come a long way toward a middle-road, moderate position." That change began as long as three years ago when he said in an interview with this correspondent that he saw no need to have Taiwan declare independence because it was already a sovereign nation. Many recent press reports have asserted that Chen's moderate position was adopted recently in an effort to win votes in the campaign. Lilley reported that rumors had flown around Taiwan that President Lee, like Chen a native Taiwanese, had secretly backed Chen because his stand on independence was closer to Lee's than the other candidate. "I didn't find any support for this," Lilley said in the briefing. Similarly, he said, rumors had flown that Soong had colluded with the mainland to defeat Chen. He had seen no evidence of that, either, Lilley said. On the all-important question of defining "One China," Lilley said he thought that Chen and Chinese leaders in Beijing were closer than most people realized. He argued that both sides should focus on economic cooperation because "there's real interdependence" between them. He suggested that "each side compromise a little" and play down the military confrontation. He also contended that the U.S. should change its focus from military to economic and urged Americans to support the Taiwanese as they go through a difficult transition from the KMT to the DPP. Lilley doubted that the threatening rhetoric from Beijing had much effect on the outcome of the election. "I don't think it worked very well," he said. "They were wrong." To the contrary, the DPP used Beijing's harsh words "to a faretheewell," Lilley said. This was "democratic politics at its sleaziest." The ambassador, who has also been an intelligence officer and held senior posts in the State and Defense Departments, said that much of Chinese military writing over the last eight years showed that Chinese military leaders considered the U.S. to be a "diminishing power" that would avoid taking losses in combat. In turn, he said, that encouraged the Chinese to seek military leverage as a means of intimidating the U.S. Many Chinese military leaders have argued that Americans will say no to the question: "Would your son die for Taiwan?" He added that this approach "has been effective on many Americans." That military writing was filled with anti-foreign paranoia and "violent rhetoric," he said. "It's pretty bad stuff." But he also noticed that when the Chinese intend to use military force, as they have against Korea, India, and Vietnam, "they don't talk about it much." They believe in surprise. Lilley said he had questioned Chinese leaders about this writing and found some of them brushing it off. "These are mad colonels," he said he was told. Even so, he warned that the biggest military danger to Taiwan would come from the 200-250 missiles the Chinese have deployed opposite Taiwan and from submarines that could seek to blockade the ports of Taiwan, whose economy is heavily dependent on foreign trade. Lilley, who also served as ambassador to Korea from 1986 to 1989, drew a parallel between Chinese and North Korean tactics, noting the North Koreans had threatened a nuclear attack on South Korea and U.S. forces stationed in Korea and Japan. Pyongyang was bought off with a promise of $4 billion to $5 billion to build nuclear reactors that do not produce weapons-grade plutonium. That works in intimidating Americans, he said. Therefore, Lilley concluded, "I think they'll keep doing it." The Chinese think "it's time for slow, hard pressure on the Administration," he said. "They think they have to do things soon." Even though Chen has momentum behind him now, Lilley worried that the Chinese might see that as pressure working and thus will get tougher. "I can see things really turning mean on these things," he said. On American arms sales to Taiwan, which are pending, Lilley said that Taiwan should first work out a strategy for meeting the threat. Then the U.S. should consider which weapons and equipment would be best suited for meeting that threat. "It's logical that we look at systems to deal with these two threats," he said. Lilley pointed out instances in the past in which U.S. arms sales to Taiwan had a political effect that benefited Taiwan. The Chinese have complained loudly about those sales in the past but shortly after each one they have come back to the negotiating table. But he supported the deployment of a missile defense system intended to protect U.S. forces in East Asia.
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