PRESIDENT Bill Clinton has ordered an aircraft carrier group into the straits between Taiwan and China, in response to the bellicose actions of the Chinese government.

The carrier, USS Independence, together with her attendant cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, will provide an enormous reinforcement to Taiwan, if needed, or a serious provocation to China, as Beijing will see it.

The Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, announcing the move this morning, said China's recent actions amounted to reckless provocations. China is conducting military and naval exercises in the straits, in order to intimidate Taiwan in the run-up to its presidential elections on March 23.

Last week, China launched three unarmed missiles into waters just off Taiwan's two main ports. Now it has announced that it will hold live-ammunition naval exercises in a 6600 sq mile area in the straits, starting on Tuesday, and has warned foreign shipping to keep clear.

China makes no bones about its intention: the parties contending in Taiwan's first democratic presidential election are being warned not even to consider proclaiming Taiwan independent.

After some hesitation in responding to this bullying, Clinton has decided that he must support Taiwan. Last December, he sent another carrier, the Nimitz, through the straits, for the first time since the US recognised China in 1979. The latest gesture goes beyond a simple transit.

Christopher said today that the Independence and attendant fleet would be in a position to be helpful if they needed to be. ``They'll be moved somewhat closer to Taiwan in future days.''

He said that China's actions had been reckless. ``I think they've been risky and smack of intimidation and coercion. So that is a situation of great concern to us.''

He said that an act of open aggression would be ``a grave matter'' to the US. ``We've made that as clear as we possibly can to them because we don't want any miscalculation on their part.'' Christopher refused to be more specific.

In the Taiwan Relations Act, under which the US recognised China in 1979, the US bound itself to work for the peaceful reunification of China, and also to protect Taiwan, if necessary.

The danger is that Beijing and Taipei will escalate their struggle without considering where it might lead, rather like the Great Powers in 1914. Political and military leaders in Beijing are engaged in an intense struggle for the succession as Deng Xiao-ping fades away, and the political campaign in Taiwan leads naturally to patriotic denunciations of Chinese pretensions.

The Americans have assumed that China must pull back from the brink, since its economic interests are so tied up with trade with the outside world. This is what everyone thought in 1914.

China expelled five Taiwanese and Hong Kong journalists today, accusing them of spying near a south-eastern coastal area where the People's Liberation Army is holding military exercises.

Three Hong Kong women reporters, whose names and news organisations were not given, were expelled by Public Security Bureau officials in Fujian province for violating security laws.

q Police at southern China's Zhuhai Airport, near the Portuguese colony of Macau, captured two Chinese couples who brandished dynamite and daggers in an attempt to hijack a domestic flight and divert it to Taiwan, the Portuguese news agency Lusa said.

The couples, accompanied by two children, tried to commandeer Hainan Airlines flight H4 180 with some 200 passengers on board. They were overpowered by security officers during the flight.