By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 11, 1999; Page A01

BEIJING, Feb. 10—Taiwan said today that China has deployed more than 100 additional ballistic missiles in provinces facing the breakaway island, a move certain to heighten tensions across one of Asia's most strategically important waterways.

Western diplomats who corroborated the report said the recent deployment more than triples the number of missiles previously believed to be positioned in that area and constitutes China's response to discussions in Washington about placing parts of Asia, including Taiwan, under a U.S. missile-defense umbrella.

The prospect of such a defense system, which is only in the planning stages, is roiling U.S.-Chinese relations and could provoke the most significant challenge to emerging Sino-American security ties since the two nations faced off over Taiwan three years ago. In recent weeks, Chinese officials -- in the Foreign Ministry and the military and research centers associated with the State Security Ministry -- warned of grave consequences if the missile-defense system is implemented in Asia, and specifically if Taiwan is allowed to participate in it.

Clinton administration officials have said they are well aware of Chinese anxiety over the possible development of such a defense system, especially as it affects Taiwan. This is one of several issues Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright plans to discuss with Chinese leaders when she visits Beijing during the first week of March, the officials said.

China's new missile deployment illustrates the sensitivity and potential explosiveness of the Taiwan and missile-defense issues. In recent weeks, China has -- literally and figuratively -- gone ballistic over the prospect of a U.S.-sponsored theater missile-defense system in Asia, even though, according to Western military experts, the technology is at best unproven and at least eight years away from being deployed, and at worst a costly mistake.

Moreover, there are no firm U.S. plans to provide Taiwan with a full-scale antimissile system of its own, although Congress directed the Pentagon last year to study the possibility. So far, the United States has sold Taiwan some Patriot antimissile batteries and is considering selling it Aegis destroyers, whose sophisticated sensing systems can provide a long-range warning against missile attacks and which are being upgraded to counter short- and medium-range missiles.

U.S. officials say they have conferred with Japan and South Korea over the past six months about creating a network of antimissile defenses in the region and that the Aug. 31 firing of a North Korean missile that overflew Japan galvanized the discussions. It became dramatically clear at that moment, they said, that the 100,000 American troops in Asia were potential targets of North Korean warheads.

U.S. officials have declined to provide details about whether an East Asian defense system would be land-based or sea-based, saying its components are still in the experimental stage. They did say, however, that the United States has raised the possibility with Japan that it might help pay for some of the research. In general, most proponents of antimissile defenses envision a system that would detect enemy launches and fire defensive missiles that would find and destroy incoming warheads traveling at thousands of miles per hour.

Analysts said there are several reasons why talk of an East Asian missile-defense system has prompted Beijing's anger. One is that China believes Taiwan -- a prosperous multi-party democracy of 21 million people -- to be a breakaway province that must return to Chinese dominion. Any moves by Washington to strengthen its ambiguous defense ties with Taiwan would be seen in Beijing as an attack on Chinese interests.

In 1996, the United States and China engaged in a tense standoff over Taiwan, as China conducted missile tests near the island and two U.S. naval battle groups were dispatched to the region. The Taiwan Relations Act calls on the U.S. government to sell Taiwan enough weapons to defend itself, but it is vague on whether U.S. troops would defend the island.

Chinese security analysts also say a missile-defense system that incorporates Taiwan would be a "force multiplier" -- something that would deny them their main tactical advantage over Taiwan's armed forces. China has a substantial missile threat; Taiwan has little means at present to counter it.

Randall Schriver, former senior policy director for China in the office of the secretary of defense, said Beijing also is concerned that including Taiwan under a missile-defense umbrella would embolden Taiwan's fledgling independence movement and further postpone its reunification with China.

Finally, the U.S. missile defense proposals for South Korea and Japan, which have gone much further than talk about Taiwan, also are bothering Beijing. Chinese analysts have written in recent weeks that the United States may be using the furor caused by North Korea's missile test as an excuse to expand its security agreements with South Korea and Japan into an anti-Communist bloc. For the first time in more than a year, such analysts are voicing concern that the United States is trying to contain China.

On Jan. 12, Sha Zukang, director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's arms control and disarmament division, warned in Washington that an American decision to go forward with the missile-defense program would touch off a new arms race. It would force other countries to develop "more advanced missiles," Sha said. "This will be in nobody's interests. . . . We wish the United States was taking a more cautious and responsible attitude."

Some Western analysts and officials say they worry that China might react to this perceived alliance by adopting a more aggressive stance in Asia, particularly toward Taiwan. In recent months, Beijing has renewed a drive to extend its reach in the South China Sea, building up what it has called a fishing facility on Mischief Reef -- in waters claimed by the Philippines. It also has launched military exercises opposite Taiwan, although on a much smaller scale than the one that provoked the 1996 confrontation.

Reacting to the Chinese actions today, Taiwan's Defense Ministry said in a statement: "The threat of the Chinese Communists' guided missile tests has an impact not only on the military front but also on the political, economic and psychological fronts."

At the heart of the problem, Western and Chinese analysts say, is a yawning gap between U.S. interests in Asia, elucidated last November in a Pentagon report, and Chinese interests, set out in China's first defense white paper, issued last year. Simply put, the Pentagon argues that the U.S. network of security arrangements and treaties is the region's bedrock of stability. A missile-defense system would strengthen these alliances, Pentagon officials say, and it would also go a long way to ensure that U.S. troops would be stationed in Asia for many years to come.

The Chinese call these alliances, stretching from Australia to Japan, "relics of the Cold War" and say they will destabilize the region. Ultimately, they want U.S. troops out of Asia in keeping with China's goal of becoming the major regional power. In this view, as in others, Beijing is far closer to the sentiments of Moscow than Washington, underscoring a significant confluence of interests between China and its Eurasian neighbor. Russia now sells China an estimated $1 billion worth of weapons a year.

The Asia security controversy comes as Sino-American relations are entering what U.S. officials acknowledge could be a difficult period. The recent honeymoon, featuring cheerful meetings between presidents Clinton and Jiang Zemin in 1997 and 1998, is over, they say.

Human rights and China's estimated $60 billion trade surplus top the list of issues the two nations must resolve. U.S. officials also want Chinese help in determining the fate of thousands of GIs listed as missing during the Korean War nearly a half-century ago, while China has denounced U.S. demands that North Korea allow a team of U.S. experts to visit an underground facility at Kumchang-ri, where the Pyongyang government is widely believed to be pushing ahead with a nuclear weapons program.

Likely to override these, however, is the missile-defense matter. "As Sino-U.S. relations slide into the abyss in 1999," predicted James Mulvenon, a specialist in Chinese security issues at the Rand Corp., "the No. 1 burr under the saddle will be theater missile defense. This is what they're hyperventilating about."

A broad array of Western analysts and officials says China has itself to blame for the renewed urgency about theater missile defense in Asia, arguing that Beijing has not used its influence on North Korea to slow its race to develop longer-range missiles with improved accuracy. When Pyongyang launched the Taepodong missile on Aug. 31, opinion was mobilized in the United States, Japan and South Korea that theater missile defense was an idea whose time had come. Taiwan squeezed itself into the debate by using its powerful backers in the U.S. Congress, sources said.

"China has basically been able to free-ride on the Korea problem since 1992 or so," said Victor Cha, a political scientist at Georgetown University. "But today, Beijing's interest in a peaceful resolution of the North Korean issue may even be more critical than those of the United States. Curbing North Korean missile sales and tests may take some of the heat off theater missile defense in the region."

Chinese officials argue, however, that their influence with the North Korean government is limited. Defense Minister Chi Haotian told former secretary of defense William J. Perry last month that China has more substantive contacts with the U.S. military than with the North Koreans, several Western sources said.

Staff writer Thomas W. Lippman in Washington contributed to this report.