Insight Symposium: Has Clinton's China policy put U.S. national security at risk?

YES: Under lax export controls and reckless sharing of information, Clinton/Gore have armed a new enemy. By Kenneth R. Timmerman

NO: Normal trade status and military exchanges involve far less risk than treating China like an enemy.

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by Kenneth R. Timmerman

November 6, 2000

When Bill Clinton and Al Gore came to power in January 1993, the United States was at the apex of its power. The People's Republic of China (PRC) was then a minor player on the world's stage, both militarily and diplomatically. The Chinese Communist leadership had shocked the world by ordering the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to open fire on pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 and was still reeling from the international isolation that followed. President Bush, harshly criticized by then-Arkansas governor Clinton for "coddling dictators from Baghdad to Beijing," had in fact issued an executive order cutting off military sales to Communist China following the Tiananmen Square massacre, much to the chagrin of major U.S. defense contractors. The Bush administration also tightened export controls on dual-use technologies, which have both civilian and military applications.

China's inability to gain free access to advanced U.S. technologies after 1989 had a direct impact on China's military hardware. When Clinton and Gore came to power, the PLA had no modern air-defense systems; it lacked a military communications network; it had no modern command-and-control systems; it had no imaging or electronic eavesdropping satellites; its strategic rockets were unreliable and its theater missiles were at a nascent stage of development, hampered by technology bottlenecks. And in all of these areas, there was no solution on the horizon.

What a difference seven years have made. In this interval we have seen dramatic changes brought about by the Clinton/Gore administration in the way the United States manages its national-security export-control system. Unbeknownst to voters, or even to most policy experts, the new administration came to Washington in January 1993 with a coherent plan for gutting the entire export-control system, which it called a "wasting asset" left over from the Cold War.

The plan was devised by William Perry, Ashton Carter and Mitchel Wallerstein and published with little fanfare in 1992 by the National Academy of Sciences. Perry, Carter and Wallerstein were appointed to the Defense Department during the first weeks of the new administration and given responsibility for putting the plan into action.

Among the critical technologies the Chinese needed -- and the administration wanted to give them -- were U.S. supercomputers. At the time, no other nation on earth save Japan had computer capabilities even remotely approaching those developed by U.S. companies such as Cray Computer. To protect our technological advantage, and to keep militarily critical supercomputers from falling into the wrong hands, the United States had a bilateral agreement with Japan to review each export before it occurred. The Clinton administration progressively ramped up the limits on what could be exported to Communist China and eventually did away with the agreement with Japan. By the end of 1998, the bilateral commission headed by Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., and Norman Dicks, D-Wash., found that more than 600 military-grade supercomputers had been shipped to China, many of them directly to PLA-controlled military enterprises or weapons-design centers.

In 1994, then-deputy defense secretary Perry used his personal influence to ram through the sale of encrypted military communications gear to the Chinese military, a deal brokered by John L. Lewis, Perry's colleague and crony at Stanford University.

Also in 1994, the administration began allowing the auction of entire U.S. defense plants, closed for lack of U.S. government orders at the end of the Cold War.

I first became aware of these auctions while working at Time magazine, and I traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to investigate the sale of equipment from Plant 85 -- the B-1 bomber plant then operated by McDonnell Douglas. Patriots within the local Machinists' Union had alerted me to nocturnal visits by a team of Chinese technicians who were taken on tours of still-classified production lines. According to a memorandum of investigation prepared by the U.S. Customs Service, the Chinese even were allowed to videotape these areas, thus gleaning precious knowledge about classified military-production techniques unavailable elsewhere.

Time ultimately pooh-poohed my investigation and, after a written complaint from an administration official, fired me rather than run the story. Five years later, McDonnell Douglas and the purchaser, China's National Aero-Technology Import-Export Corp., finally were indicted by the Justice Department for violating U.S. export-control laws.

When the Clinton/Gore administration found these laws inconvenient, they simply changed them. Today, the Commerce Department has lifted most restrictions on the sale of high technology to Communist China and pared down its licensing staff. Meanwhile, the Defense Technology Security Administration -- the Pentagon office that coordinates the national-security review of such exports -- has been gutted, splintered and finally moved beyond the Washington Beltway, essentially exiled from day-to-day policy decisions.

The bottom line is simple and devastating: Today we are facing a more modern, more aggressive Chinese military, equipped with some of the best technology in the world, thanks to Clinton and Gore.

Here is a short list of the new military capabilities the PLA has brought on line since Clinton came to the White House:

A new generation of road-mobile, solid-fuel strategic missiles, including the DF-31, capable of reaching the U.S. heartland;

An encrypted military-communications system virtually impervious to electronic eavesdropping, coupled to a national command-and-control system;

A new generation of ballistic-missile submarines;

AWACS command-and-control aircraft;

Sovremenny-class destroyers, equipped with SS-N-22 nuclear-capable antishipping missiles;

SA-10 air-defense missiles and S-300 antitactical ballistic-missile systems, deployed along the coast facing Taiwan;

Several hundred improved M-11 (CSS-7 Mod2) attack missiles facing Taiwan, equipped with U.S.-built GPS guidance systems as well as hundreds of Su-27 and Su-30 strike aircraft and laser-guided missiles from Russia; and

Antisatellite weapons capable of blinding the United States' early-warning and intelligence-gathering capabilities.

But the new hardware only tells a fraction of the story. The PLA also is learning the secrets of how the United States fights wars and prepares for them, thanks to a military-to-military exchange program reinvented by Secretary of Defense Perry after China threatened to launch nuclear weapons against Los Angeles in February 1996. Perry's rationale: "If we treat China as an enemy, it will surely become one." In just seven years, thanks to U.S. technology and direct Russian-arms transfers, the PLA has leapfrogged a generation of military technology and now is equipped with weapons that were designed in the 1980s and early 1990s, putting it on a par with the type of weapons systems used by the United States during the Persian Gulf War. "What the Chinese got from us is bad enough," says Richard Fisher, a former aide to Rep. Cox, who is writing a book on Chinese weapons systems. "But what they are getting from Russia is far more operational."

In December 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin signed a strategic-cooperation agreement in Beijing that called for an additional $20 billion of Russian-arms transfers to the PRC by 2004. The agreement also doubled the number of Russian military technicians and nuclear experts working in China from an estimated 4,000 today to nearly 9,000. Russia's Cold War arsenal is being transferred lock, stock and barrel to China. "There is not a single Russian weapon, not a single Russian military technology, that is off-limits to China," Russian researcher Alexander Nemets told a panel of top congressional aides earlier this year.

One of the most devastating weapons transferred to China by Russia is the SS-N-22 supersonic cruise missile, which was designed to knock out U.S. aircraft carriers. These new missiles are capable of carrying a 200 kiloton nuclear warhead and have been installed on China's new Sovremenny-class destroyers, the second of which is set to arrive in the coming weeks.

The U.S. House of Representatives is so troubled by Russia's willingness to sell China these weapons that it passed legislation on Oct. 4 cutting off any further U.S. financial assistance to Russia until these transfers stop. But the damage already has been done.

China's growing military capabilities and its alliance with Russia are made even more troubling by the growing belligerence that has crept into public statements by top Chinese civilian and military leaders. Speaking at the PLA's Military Command College in December 1999, Defense Minister Chi Haotian painted a stark picture of Communist China's future relations with the United States. "Seen from the changes in the world situation and the United States' hegemonic strategy for creating monopolarity, war is inevitable," Chi said. "We cannot avoid it. The issue is that the Chinese armed forces must control the initiative of this war." Accordingly, he announced an increase in the PRC defense budget and noted that fully 52 percent of the budget through the year 2003 would be targeted on retaking Taiwan.

China does not have to defeat the United States in a war in order to seize Taiwan. It merely must prevent the United States from intervening. "These new weapons alone are enough to increase the inhibitions of an American president who contemplates getting involved in a Taiwan crisis," says Peter Rodman of the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom.

The arming of Communist China by the Clinton/Gore administration took place at a time when China's hostile intentions were becoming increasingly clear, both toward the United States and toward democratic Taiwan. While we cannot know whether China will be our enemy in 10 or 15 years, hostile statements and provocative actions by the Chinese military require the United States to prepare for the worst. Clinton and Gore have helped create a threat to our nation's security which simply did not exist seven years ago.

For the first time in our history, a U.S. administration has made diluting American power and strengthening her potential adversaries the centerpiece of its national-security policy.

Timmerman, a contributing editor at Reader's Digest, is the author of the just published book Selling Out America, available at www.timmerman2000.com.

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No: Normal trade status and military exchanges involve far less risk than treating China like an enemy.

by Mark A. Groombridge

Granted, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is an oppressive nondemocratic state that continues to violate the human rights of citizens, particularly political dissidents and Christians. It also is true that it continues to send weapons systems to rogue regimes and, over the long term, it is the United States' most likely adversary. Even in the short to medium term, it threatens the oil-rich South China Sea and Taiwan, an island which just celebrated its second democratic presidential election.

So, given all this, why would the United States engage at all with a regime so diametrically opposed to our values and which poses a potential military threat? The answer is simple: It is in our vital national-security interests. Engagement with China --through trade and cultural, government and military exchanges -- benefits not only citizens of the United States but, most notably, the citizens of China as well. Engagement with China will strengthen the hand of the most pro-reform elements in China -- something that clearly is in the interest of the United States.

At the outset, it is important to establish a baseline assumption -- one that many observers in the West fail to recognize. While many consider the PRC a dictatorship, they fail to note that power is quite divided throughout the country. We should be wary of saying that the Chinese government believes in or supports a particular policy. Governments do not act; individual officials do. Divisions exist not only between the top leadership, but also between central, regional and local governments. Moreover, it is wrong to think that nongovernmental groups have no power. During China's economic-reform period, a number of interest groups emerged that are challenging and shaping the role of China's government. The argument advanced here is that engagement with China is the best way to strengthen the position of those elements in China's government and society who share similar attitudes toward peace, democracy and human rights.

Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate approved establishing "permanent normal trade relations" with China, which helps to smooth the PRC's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This legislation will dramatically expand the opportunities for U.S. businesses to conduct business in China and will give Chinese workers the chance to work outside of the state system. Anything the United States can do to decrease the dependence of Chinese workers on the state is mutually beneficial.

Increased trade with China will represent a major victory for pro-market reformers in the Chinese leadership. The fact is those reformers still face stiff internal opposition. One of the primary reasons that China has not moved more quickly down the reform path is the divisive political battles currently fracturing the government. Different factions exist in China with markedly different attitudes toward economic policy. Increasing the linkages between China's domestic economy and the international economy would help legitimize the undoubtedly painful restructuring that China will have to undertake if it is to continue its transition toward a true market economy.

Increased trade with China also will serve to strengthen the power of China's burgeoning middle class. This development of an increasingly vocal middle class has played an important role in the political development of other Confucian-based cultures, such as South Korea and Taiwan. The role of autonomous interest groups, with their own access to resources, played a critical role in the evolution of democratic institutions in those two countries.

The same dynamic can apply to China. Since China began its economic reform program some 22 years ago, we have seen nonstate enterprises playing an increasingly important role in the economy. State-owned enterprises accounted for close to 80 percent of the nation's wealth in 1978. Today, they account for only 25 percent. This matters greatly in terms of who controls the purse strings. A rallying cry of the American Revolution was "no taxation without representation." The converse is likely true as well -- no representation without taxation. The rise of nonstate enterprises has had profound implications. Economically, it has meant that the state has been forced to tax wealth, as opposed to distribute wealth.

Socially and politically, the mass of wealth that citizens now are generating has meant that citizens now criticize policies of the government much more freely than in the past. To be sure, it is primarily in the realm of economics that people criticize the government, but they also are beginning to question more fundamental issues such as the rule of law and independence of the judiciary. Whether in streamlining administrative reform, increasing intellectual-property rights or allowing for private right of action against the government, the citizenry of China is demanding reform. With this social change in mind Martin Lee, chairman of the Democratic Party of Hong Kong and an ardent defender of human rights, recently wrote: "The participation of China in the WTO would not only have economic and political benefits, but would also serve to bolster those in China who understand that the country must embrace the rule of law."

Is it in the U.S. national interest to see China liberalize and reform its economy in a more market-oriented direction? The answer is yes. And increased trade will help move China closer to this goal.

Apart from trade, political and military exchanges between the PRC and the U.S. government also have served the U.S. national interest. The case for political exchanges is much simpler. In short, China is too big to ignore. One way to encourage pro-reform elements in China is for our top officials physically to meet with those leaders, such as Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, and let them know they have the backing of the world's superpower. It shows that we take the relationship seriously -- as we should. China has one-fifth of the world's population, has nuclear weapons and is an emerging regional and world power.

The governments of the United States and China share a number of common interests, and examples abound. On the environmental front, exchanges with China are promoting the development of noncoal-based fuel technologies. The often overlooked area, though, where the United States and China share common interests is on the security front. China will continue to play a vital role in limiting a nuclear-arms race in South Asia and in securing a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula. For better or worse, the Beijing leadership is the only government that appears to have any diplomatic influence on North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il. If a crisis develops there, having contact between the highest level officials will help ease, if not resolve, the situation.

There is a strong case to be made for high-level military exchanges as well. There is near unanimity among top U.S. military officials that high-level exchanges and military tours show the Chinese leadership how much superior the U.S. military is in comparison to the Chinese. China's military suffers from numerous problems, despite increased expenditures (which still are below those of the United States) in recent years. To date, China does not have the capability to project military power. The one archaic aircraft carrier they bought from Russia has been converted into an entertainment complex. Moreover, if a crisis in Asia develops, whether in Korea or the Taiwan Strait, high-level contacts will be helpful in demonstrating U.S. resolve to finding a solution.

Without a doubt, China is trying to strengthen its military, and much has been written on China's attempts to develop and procure advanced-weapons systems and leapfrog over a whole generation of technology they do not possess or are unable to deploy effectively. This calls into question, of course, not just military exchanges but the transfer of technology, whether through nuclear espionage or trade.

On the nuclear-espionage front, we should treat it as a given that China is attempting to steal our technologies. So is every country. And we should also treat it as a given that we are attempting to do the same. To deny this is naïve. It should go without saying that strengthening security at our sensitive military-testing installations is a key U.S. priority. It bears mentioning, though, that the technology that China was accused of stealing from the Los Alamos National Laboratory was available on the Internet.

On the issue of dangerous technology transfer through trade, critics of the United States must be realistic. Our most sensitive technologies already are protected under existing U.S. law and violators have been punished. Unilateral export controls are useless since other countries would sell the same products and services to the Chinese government. Other countries are quite explicit about the fact that they will continue to give China their most advanced technology. Christian Pierret, the French junior industrial minister, for example, publicly declared in Beijing in 1998 that: "We [the French government] are playing to the fullest the game of technology transfers."

Virtually all Americans want to see China develop into a democratic state with an economy based on free-market principles. The best way to do this is through engagement. Every president since Richard Nixon's historic trip, and every secretary of state has supported a policy of engagement. Many human-rights activists who have been jailed in China and Christian leaders in both China and the United States support this policy, as do top democratic legislators in Hong Kong and both the former and current presidents of Taiwan.

If the United States shuts the door on China, we will have no influence at all. This only will serve to strengthen the hands of those opposed to democracy and human rights. It will undermine the position of many of our friends in China who need our help now more than ever. No one can be sure which direction China will develop in the future. We can be sure, though, that when change does come, an established U.S. presence there will be beneficial. Consider for a moment the countries the United States has isolated -- Burma, Cuba and North Korea. Do we really want China to follow that path?