At its national day military parade this week, Taiwan is expected to showcase a long range cruise missile that promises to undercut China’s overwhelming military superiority. Nick-named the “Brave Wind”, Taiwan’s cruise missile Hsiung Feng 2E, with its range of 1000 km, is capable of hitting China’s coastal cities, including Shanghai. Taipei’s display of “Brave Wind” is bound to anger Beijing and irritate Washington.

On the face of it, a few Taiwanese cruise missiles do not measure up to the hundreds of missiles that China has deployed against Taiwan. But in the topsy turvy world of weapons of mass destruction, numbers are not everything. Even a small missile armoury produces options for deterrence, especially if coupled with nuclear weapons. Taiwan seems to have learnt from Pakistan that you can trump the superior military power of a larger neighbour through a small nuclear force. In the 1970s, Washington pressured Taiwan to give up its military nuclear programme. In recent years, “strategic autonomy” has once again become politically attractive for Taipei.

Since he took charge of Taiwan in 2000, President Chen Shu-bian has made life difficult for both Beijing and Washington, by promoting an independent identity for the territory and wanting to avoid a total security dependence on Washington. The decisions to hold the first ever military parade in sixteen years and show off the “Brave Wind” mark the culmination of Chen’s controversial transformation of cross-straits relations and potentially the East Asian balance of power.

Chinese nationalism

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