China acts tough in cross-strait issues

However, what happened in the past two months has been happening for decades. The policy of selling weapons to Taiwan goes back to the establishment of Sino-American relations in 1979. The custom of receiving the Dalai Lama goes back for almost two decades.

What has changed is not American policy. What has changed is that China has grown stronger and expects changes in American behavior. It is loud in demanding that the United States must respect its “core interests.”

However, China being a pragmatic power should realize that if it really wants the United States to halt or to reduce arms supplies to Taiwan, it is not enough to insist on its “core interests.” It must try to understand the American position and find a way to make it possible for the United States to change its policy.

Having lived with the arms sales issue for over three decades, Chinese officials know that the Obama administration is obliged by law to help Taiwan defend itself.

Beijing points out that relations between Taiwan and the mainland have improved dramatically since Ma Ying-jeou became in 2008. True, in theory, relaxation of cross-strait tensions should reduce the need to provide weapons to Taiwan.

However, while many people expected that China would reduce the number of its missiles threatening Taiwan, the opposite has happened.

In the almost two years of the Ma presidency, China has increased the number of missiles targeting Taiwan. The Chinese position is that these missiles will only be dismantled after peace talks with Taiwan prove successful.

That is to say, China is strengthening its hand before talking to Taiwan. Meanwhile, it wants to weaken Taiwan's hand by shutting off its supply of advanced weapons.

But America's commitment to Taiwan is linked to its entire concept of foreign relations and defense. The United States has military alliances around the world and, while Taiwan technically is not an ally since the mutual defense treaty was terminated in 1980, Washington through the Taiwan Relations Act assumed the obligation of helping in the defense of Taiwan.

The United States feels that if it does not live up to its commitment to Taiwan, other allies in the region, such as Japan and South Korea, will wonder about the value of their military alliance with Washington.

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