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

Taiwan’s “Brave Wind” comes at an inconvenient time for Beijing which is about to hold the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party next week. Much like Indian leaders on Kashmir, Chinese communists cannot afford to look weak on Taiwan and allow rivals to outflank them on national security.

At the congress, Hu Jintao, the president of China and the boss of the CCP, is expected to step up the political tirade against Taiwan and its plans to hold a referendum on joining the United Nations. While there is no hope in hell that Taiwan would be admitted to the UN, Chen is using the referendum as a way to consolidate the separatist sentiment in the territory.

Hu’s theory

CCP leaders are more than mere managers of the party-state in China.

They are expected to be brilliant political theorists. Like the leaders of the three preceding generations of the CCP, Hu Jintao would like his ideas to be canonised and grafted on to the party constitution. There is speculation on which ideas of Hu might merit such honour. One view is that Hu’s thesis on “scientific development”, which is the CCP version of the term “sustainable development” commonly used around the world, might make the grade.

Others point to the new phrase recently coined by Hu and subsumes the idea of scientific development. The tongue twister is called “Four Steadfasts”. Hu insists that the CCP must hold “steadfast” to the emancipation of the mind, the reform and opening policy, scientific development and social harmony.

The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.