Confrontation with the United States } 631
already been proven by past experience. This will not bring about any benefi-
cia l resu lt.”^30 A few days later, an editorial in the CCP-controlled Hong Kong
newspaper Dagong bao said:
Here it is necessary to remind certain Americans: Do not forget the
lessons you learned from the battlefields in Korea and Vietnam. Do not
put the interests and even lives of American people at stake. ... Whoever
dares to meddle in, or even invade, Taiwan, the Chinese people will
fight them to the end until their final victory.^31
By mid-March, the PRC and the United States were locked in an increas-
ingly intense struggle, with both sides escalating military deployments and
threatening one another, each in its own way, with war. Neither side wanted,
expected, or was prepared for war. Both sides maneuvered very carefully to
avoid conflict, and once Taiwan’s March 23 presidential elections were over,
the two sides quickly began working to repair relations. The PRC and the
United States had, however, experienced their first military confrontation in
twenty-eight years. This stark reality raised a question for the leaders of both
countries: where is the Sino-American relation going, and how will that affect
our national interests?
The confrontation of 1996 was apparently a deep shock to Beijing. Chinese
leaders went into the 1995–1996 crisis convinced that the United States would
not intervene forcefully and effectively in a cross-Strait conflict.^32 A long list
of US bugouts—Vietnam in 1974–1975, Lebanon in 1982, Haiti in 1993, and
Somalia in 1994—had convinced PLA analysts and CCP propagandists that
United States did not have the stomach any more for a major war. This belief
was reinforced by the clear desire of US leaders in the executive branch to
minimize conflict over Taiwan and cooperate in other areas. Many Chinese
leaders had convinced themselves that while the United States might protest
and take some symbolic actions in the event of a cross-Strait clash, it would
not do anything effective. The US dispatch of not one but two aircraft carrier
battle groups dispelled this belief. After the 1995–1996 confrontation, it was
clear to Chinese defense planners that the United States was likely to inter-
vene in a cross-Strait conflict, and that the PLA was still woefully unprepared
for such an eventuality. China began developing potent new capabilities
designed to deter, delay, and downgrade US military intervention to shelter
Taiwan for long enough to allow the PLA to secure control over that island—a
PLA capability the US military came to call “anti-access area denial.” This
buildup of China’s anti-US military capabilities would continue into the sec-
ond decade of the twenty-first century, ultimately very substantially narrow-
ing the qualitative gap between US and PRC military capabilities.^33
Nor was the effect of PLA exercises on Taiwan what Beijing had antici-
pated. In terms of the voting behavior of Taiwan’s electorate, PLA intimida-
tion backfired. In the face of blatant PLA threats, Taiwan’s electorate rallied