U.S. and Taiwan (2006)

U.S. Department of State

Daily Press Briefing

Sean McCormack, Spokesman
Washington, DC
May 11, 2006

12:10 p.m. EDT

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QUESTION: Yeah, my question is on Taiwan. Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian made a surprise visit in Libya and what's your response to that? Do you have any concern that Taiwan is developing relationship with Libya?

MR. MCCORMACK: That's for the two parties to decide.

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QUESTION: I just wanted to take a flyer at the selection -- no? Go, Dave. Taiwan. Yes.

MR. MCCORMACK: All right. What do you have, Dave?

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QUESTION: Still a follow up on Taiwan. You did mention that, you know, that's between Chen Shui-bian stopover in Libya; that's between Libya and Taiwan. But U.S. did offer the transit stops to Chen and Chen refused it and also complained about it. So is that going to have any influence on U.S.-Taiwan relation?

MR. MCCORMACK: I wouldn't expect so. It was a decision that President Chen made not to stopover. He was offered transit both outgoing and returning home. He decided not to take us up on it.

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QUESTION: Sean, just to follow up on sort of two points. First of all, I understand that you're saying it's their decision to make, but I just want to point out that today the chief of staff in the Kremlin actually criticized an American program of missiles with non-nuclear warheads, so they actually talked about your arsenal and you're refraining from talking about their own.

But my other point is, in the case of China, you've said many, many times that they have no reason to build up their military capabilities and they're spending way too much money in their budget on this and you're not willing to say this about Russia. What is the difference? Is it that Russia has more -- are there more threats to Russia than they are to China?

MR. MCCORMACK: No, no. You go back and look at -- go back and look at what we've said. Yes, we believe -- we believe the Chinese military buildup is outsized to its needs and specifically we have mentioned the buildup just opposite Taiwan on the Taiwan Straits.

But the key, the fundamental problem that we had, if you look at what Secretary Rumsfeld has said on the issue and what Secretary Rice has said on the issue, is the issue of transparency. We believe that in the past the Chinese Government has not been transparent as to the amount of money that it has been spending. And that was the point I was trying to make about the Russian Government's expenditures is that there is an open political process that their budget goes through, so you have much greater visibility into exactly what it is that they are doing. And you want to take a look at -- you want to take a look at those expenditures over time to see what sort of trajectory that we have.

The point with the Chinese is that we think that for quite some time they have -- their public, published declarations about what they've been spending have been -- have really low-balled what it is that they're really spending. So it's the transparency issue, it's the focus of their spending and -- also related to that transparency issue -- real questions about exactly, you know, kind of is this an outsized military buildup.

Yes, sir.

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(The briefing was concluded at 12:55 p.m.)