Pentagon reports more missiles on Taiwan Strait

China continued deploying more missiles across the Taiwan Strait over the past year in spite of a decline in tensions since the election of a new Taiwanese president, the Pentagon said yesterday.

In its annual report on the Chinese military, the Pentagon said China was “rapidly developing coercive capabilities” to deter Taiwan – which Beijing considers a renegade province – from seeking de jure independence.

“These same capabilities could in the future be used to pressure Taiwan toward a settlement of the cross-Strait dispute on Beijing's terms while simultaneously attempting to deter, delay, or deny any possible US support for the island in case of conflict,” the report said.

“This modernisation and the threat to Taiwan continue despite significant reduction in cross-Strait tension over the last year since Taiwan elected a new president.”

The congressionally mandated report comes just weeks after an incident in the South China Sea where five Chinese naval, fisheries and fishing ships, harassed the USNS Impeccable, a US navy ship that is used for detecting submarines. Defence experts say the Chinese navy is increasingly trying to challenge the US Seventh Fleet, which has long been the dominant naval power in the region.

Hawks in the US are concerned that China is expanding the capabilities of its military to become more aggressive in Asia and elsewhere. Other officials say it is natural for China to develop its military as it grows into a big power, but they raise questions about a lack of transparency.

“There are legitimate reasons for them to grow a ‘blue water' navy mostly to help the rest of us to ensure the stability and prosperity of this globalised world of ours,” said one US defence official.

“So we're okay with that and we want to engage with them going forwards and partner where it makes sense. It's the other things that they are doing on the way that leaves you baffled, like this incident with the Impeccable.”

After several days of heated rhetoric, both the US and China have attempted to ratchet down the tensions. The US sent a destroyer to protect the Impeccable after the incident, but the White House was later annoyed that the Pentagon revealed the move, to avoid the perception that the US was trying to escalate the incident.

While the Chinese military budget has seen double-digit growth for a number of years, the Pentagon said the People's Liberation Army still had “limited” ability to sustain military power at a distance. But it said the Chinese continued to develop “disruptive technologies”, such as missiles that would hinder adversaries from entering a battle zone, that “are changing regional military balances and that have implications beyond the Asia-Pacific region”.

The term disruptive technology describes products or processes that marginalise older technologies. In the military, cyber warfare can disable computer-based weapons systems. In 2007, China destroyed one of its weather satellites in space with a kinetic weapon, leading to questions on the safety of US surveillance and communications satellites.

The Pentagon said China's lack of transparency on its military spending and capabilities “poses risks to stability by creating uncertainty and increasing the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation.”