Late Friday/early Saturday - to quite a bit of international fuss - China's new 7,600-ton Russian-built Sovremenniy class guided-missile destroyer Hangzhou sailed through the Taiwan Strait. One wonders what exactly the excitement is all about. Naturally, on its way from St Petersburg, where it was delivered to the Chinese navy in late December, to its homebase of Ningbo in Zhejiang province, the ship - with some additional travelling time - could have sailed east of Taiwan instead of using the strait. But why do that? And wouldn't going out of its way have raised yet another set of questions?

There is, of course, the issue of the ship's very existence. The Sunburn supersonic anti-ship missiles with which the destroyer and its sister ship, to be delivered to China later this year, will be equipped are presumed to be capable of penetrating the Aegis-system defenses of US aircraft carrier battle groups - and that makes some people nervous. But as a retired American admiral commented, "One or two new ships do not a navy make," and even with this latest addition to its East Sea Fleet mainland Chinese naval forces in the region remain vastly outgunned by the combined US/Taiwanese naval presence - indeed by far-from-home US forces alone.

China, a major regional power, is upgrading its armed forces to safeguard its interests, which, by any count we can think of, seems a perfectly legitimate and reasonable thing to do. Moreover, at least in part, China's new weapons purchases are in direct response to similar moves by Taiwan. Just two years ago, the island's navy took delivery of the last of six modern 3,200-ton French-built Lafayette class frigates which greatly enhanced its fire power. At the time when the purchase of those frigates was first mooted, 1991/92, Beijing strongly objected. To no avail. But how the ships got to Taiwan is a fascinating story of intrigue and corruption and a vivid demonstration of Western corrupt practices, utter lack of that vaunted quality of transparency, and utter disregard of political and military consequences when it comes to hocking military hardware. It is also now the subject of a high-profile Paris court case involving the actions of a former French president and his long-serving foreign minister as well as the latter's mistress who has revealed some real gems in her tell-all book "Whore of the Republic" (Putain de la Republique). Though the whole truth may never come to be known and there are numerous variants to the story, here's what apparently went down:

French president Francois Mitterrand and his foreign minister (1988-95) and close personal friend Roland Dumas (later appointed president of the constitutional court) initially opposed the sale of the French frigates to Taiwan. But defense electronics firm Thomson, then a state enterprise and hard up for cash, badly wanted the US$2.5 billion deal to go through. So, enter the self-styled whore of the republic, Christine Deviers-Joncour.

Dumas, it seems, had at some point in 1990/91 placed his lover as a lobbyist with oil giant Elf Aquitaine (then also a public enterprise), a matter made easier by the fact that he had previously (in 1989) helped his buddy Loik Le Floch-Prigent attain the lucrative post of Elf chairman. Elf even then was a cash-rich outfit; now - after being privatized and merged with TotalFina to form the world's fourth-largest oil group - it's valued at US$100 billion. With plenty of cash on hand, Elf was appointed the lead public enterprise to help facilitate foreign business of other state-owned companies not so lucky with generous commissions and bribes, a legitimate practice under French law. Well, on behalf of Thomson, it seems, the Elf facilitation team approached good old Christine and some pointed pillow talk (as well as a pair of fancy shoes and some Greek statues for the cultured art lover, she says) turned the trick and Dumas changed his mind and in turn changed Mitterrand's on the frigate sale. As for herself, Deviers-Joncour has admitted receiving some US$10 million in commissions from Elf and claims that Elf paid out a total of 5.5 billion francs (US$827 million) on behalf of Thomson.

Hard to believe? Not really. Though the sums are much smaller, the Elf team has also been implicated in paying some 30 million deutschmarks (US$15 million) to the party of former German chancellor Helmut Kohl to help the latter's 1994 re-election bid in return for the Elf takeover of a former East German petrochemical concern and allegedly had former French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn (who resigned last year to "clear his name") on its payroll.

Great stuff, all this, and we're anxious to see what happens to the Paris indictment of Dumas, Le Floch-Prigent, Deviers-Joncour, and four others. Meanwhile in Germany, where Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrats have been racked by an ever widening black money scandal and will be asked to pay DM41 million (US$21 million) in fines, 86 percent of voters now believe that any politician can easily be bought. So, fellow Asians, beware when you deal with those Western crony capitalists.

With acknowledgement to Asia Times Online.