Simply by raising the specter of an assault, they said, Beijing is stepping up pressure on Taiwan to retreat from Lee's position and on the United States to lean more heavily on Taipei. I don't think Beijing wants necessarily to use military force. But Andrew Yang, a senior military analyst at the Taipei-based Council of Advanced Policy Studies, said he has detected no signs of preparations for any large maneuver in the Taiwan Strait. He said such signs were apparent months before China conducted serious military exercises near Taiwan in 1996. The real trick is sifting the bluster from the reality.
Most analysts see more than bluster.
They believe Chinese leaders debated the merits of military action during their summer retreat, and some China watchers say Jiang has come under pressure from hard-line army officers. After that visit, which China said violated U.S. pledges to have only unofficial relations with Taiwan, Beijing launched large-scale military exercises in the Taiwan Strait and fired missiles near Taiwan. Beijing has followed through on actions foretold by Chinese intermediaries on earlier occasions. In 1996, Mulvenon said, Chinese who claimed connections to the army visited the Pentagon and warned that China was planning to fire a missile an hour for six days near Taiwan. Missiles were fired soon afterward, although not nearly as many as threatened.