China’s Missile Business

Washington Post, 14 July 2000

INTELLIGENCE reports indicate that China is helping nuclear-armed Pakistan build
long-range
ballistic missiles. The problem persists after the visit to Beijing last weekend by John D. Holum,
the State Department’s senior arms control adviser. Though Mr. Holum claimed some progress in
the talks, the Chinese took the occasion to deliver yet another lecture about U.S. missile defense
development and arms sales to Taiwan–and to link resolution of those complaints to the issue of
Beijing’s exports of missile technology.

The question, then, is whether U.S. policy needs more teeth. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.)
and
Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) are sponsoring the China Nonproliferation Act, which would
require the president to make an annual report on China’s distribution of potentially dangerous
technology, and to impose sanctions on persons or companies within China that appear
responsible, as well as on the Chinese government.

The Clinton administration says this would make an improving situation worse. Dialogue
with
China has produced results, such as a 1994 Chinese promise to stop selling M-11 missiles to
Pakistan and to abide by the “guidelines” of the Missile Technology Control Regime (which
China has still not formally joined). Beijing also foreswore “new” nuclear help to Iran. The
administration further contends that the bill’s sweeping language could mean punishing U.S.
businesses that innocently sold “dual use” technology to China that was passed on to Pakistan.

Yet, as Mr. Holum has just experienced, the U.S.-China dialogue on
nonproliferation–recently
resumed after Beijing suspended it over the accidental bombing of China’s Belgrade
embassy–remains hostage to Chinese pique over, and designs on, Taiwan. And Beijing clearly
interprets its
promise to observe the Missile Technology Control Regime as permitting assistance to Pakistan
short of actually transferring weapons. This aid may obey the letter of the 1998 public joint
pledge by President Clinton and China’s President Jiang Zemin not to provide ballistic missiles
to any South Asian country–but it’s not exactly in keeping with the spirit. Yes, Mr. Clinton
already has authority to sanction China under current law. But he has doggedly declined to do so
without a “smoking gun” from U.S. intelligence.

No doubt the Republican sponsors of the China Nonproliferation Act are playing
election-year
politics. And the White House has a point when it asks why the bill addresses only China when
other countries, such as Russia and North Korea, engage in similar behavior. Still, China’s
continuing assistance to Pakistan’s weapons program in the face of so many U.S. efforts to talk
Beijing out of it shows the limits of a nonconfrontational approach. Clearly, China views certain
missile-making projects abroad as vital to its national security strategy–vital enough to trump
some other economic and diplomatic interests. By the same token, the United States should make
clear that a certain amount of Chinese missile-making is incompatible with business as usual.
Sen. Thompson is negotiating with Senate Democrats and the White House to modify the
clumsier aspects of his bill, so that it can be brought to a Senate vote without obstructing passage
of permanent normal trade relations (which we support). If the bill is appropriately refined and
separated from the trading relations legislation, then its passage will send Beijing a useful
signal.