As the People's Liberation Army (PLA) stepped up its belligerent rhetoric against Taiwan yesterday by vowing that it was prepared to lose a thousand soldiers rather than an inch of land, Taiwan for the first time openly said it needed the protection of a proposed regional anti-missile system being promoted by the United States.
This will be seen in Beijing as a further provocation by Taipei, as it has said that the application of an anti-missile shield to Taiwan would be seen as an act of war.
In a closed-door briefing for leading officials of the ruling Nationalist Party in Taipei, the Defence Minister, Mr Tang Fei, said it was necessary for Taiwan to take part in the high-tech Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) proposal which the Japanese parliament backed last week. "From the standpoint of national security, building a missile defence system is necessary for the sake of national self-defence," Mr Tang was quoted as saying.
An official told reporters that President Lee Teng-hui had endorsed the programme, saying that TMD "not only meets the needs of the current situation but also is in line with the long-term interest of the country".
The United States and Japan signed a memorandum on Monday to develop the embryonic system, which is designed primarily to protect Japan and South Korea from North Korean missiles.
Beijing considers that it is a strategic device to contain China, which has not ruled out force to bring about unity with Taiwan. China's Prime Minister, Mr Zhu Rongji, recently described the possible inclusion of Taiwan in the shield as "encroachment on China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and interference in China's internal affairs".
Beijing kept up an intimidatory drum-beat against Taiwan yesterday, which began following President Lee's July 9th statement claiming that Taiwan and China should deal with each other on a special state-to-state relationship, a move Beijing sees as promoting independence.
The PLA's Liberation Army daily criticised Taiwan for spending billions of dollars on defence, declaring: "We would rather lose a thousand soldiers than lose an inch of land."
It reminded Taipei that the PLA routed an eight million-strong Nationalist army in a civil war in 1949.
Meanwhile a crash forced Taiwan to ground its most advanced fighters yesterday, an embarrassing setback at a time when it was proclaiming its own military readiness.
A US-made F-16 ditched in southern Taiwan just six weeks after the end of an earlier grounding of the F-16 fleet because of three other crashes since March 1998.