Made in China

by Frank Gaffney Jr.
The Washington Times, July 23, 1996

At this writing, the precise cause of the
destruction of TWA Flight 800 remains frustratingly
elusive.

Among the possible explanations that has yet to be
conclusively ruled out is an alarming hypothesis: The 747
could have been shot down by a surface-to-air missile
(SAM) as it climbed to cruising altitude after take-off
from New York’s JFK Airport.

Based upon what is now known about the fate of this
flight, the SAM scenario seems an unlikely one. The sorts
of man-portable surface-to-air missiles that could
conceivably have been fired from a small boat (for
example, the U.S.-made Stinger or the Soviet SAM-7) would
have had a hard time causing severe damage to a large
aircraft at 13,000 feet with wing-mounted engines and an
admirable record of operating with one or two engines out
of commission. Still, several eye-witnesses describe
seeing arcs of light and an initial explosion that was
followed by the massive fireball — evidence that could
fit a surface-to-air missile hypothesis.

Whether a SAM proves to have been involved in this
episode or not, the mere fact it might have been is a
cause for alarm to every air traveler. No amount of
airport identity checks, sophisticated screening devices
or access controls will prevent terrible losses of life
if terrorists acquire the means to shoot down commercial
airplanes at will.

Incredibly, communist China is evidently prepared to
make such a nightmare a reality. On May 23, federal
authorities announced they had broken up a Chinese
smuggling ring that had sold thousands of lethal, fully
automatic AK-47 machine guns to West Coast street gangs.
In the course of an undercover sting operation, however,
U.S. agents were offered — among other formidable
ordinance — shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.

That revelation is made even more alarming by the
reported involvement of senior Chinese government
officials in this extremely unfriendly act. One of these,
Maj. Gen. He Ping, is the son-in-law of China’s fading
leader, Deng Xiao-ping. He heads Poly Group, a company
that reports directly to the Central Military Commission
of the People’s Liberation Army. But for what appears to
have been a deliberate effort to sabotage the
investigation, Customs and the ATF believe they would
have been able to arrest Gen. He on U.S. soil and make
him a material witness in their case against the Chinese
smugglers. A formal investigation of the Treasury,
Justice and State Departments has reportedly been
launched in the hope of determining who in the Clinton
administration might have blown this critical sting
operation.

Unfortunately, the sale of surface-to-air missiles to
gangs, drug lords, terrorists or other comers is hardly
the only cause for concern about the Chinese communists.
In the recent past, they have also been caught selling
ring magnets — a key ingredient in the enrichment of
uranium for nuclear weapons purposes — to Pakistan, an
action that even the appeasement-minded Undersecretary of
State Lynn Davis has acknowledged is a violation of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In addition, Pakistan
has received Chinese-made M-11 ballistic missiles, now
believed to be operational and capable of delivering
nuclear warheads against India.

What is more, Beijing has been doing a lot of
proliferating with Islamic revolutionary Iran. According
to press reports, this includes the transfer of a
complete poison gas facility and an array of missile
technology. The latter involves not only advanced
ballistic missiles. It also entails the transfer of large
numbers of C-802 cruise missiles. These modern devices
are believed to be powered by U.S.-designed turbofan
engines. If salvo-launched from the fleet of fast patrol
boats also being sold to Iran by China, these C-802s have
the potential to inflict grave harm on international
shipping in the Persian Gulf and/or on U.S. naval vessels
operating there. Such a possibility is of sufficient
concern to the on-the-scene commander, Vice Adm. Scott
Redd, that he has courageously held no fewer than three
press conferences to warn about the danger posed by
Iran’s Chinese missiles.

The Clinton administration has essentially chosen to
ignore these ominous developments. It is, ironically,
even ignoring the requirements of the Gore-McCain act –
legislation co-sponsored by then-Sen. Al Gore before he
became vice president. It requires sanctions against
countries providing missile technology to the likes of
Iran and Iraq.

To be sure, President Clinton has recently threatened
sanctions against China, but only to defend the
intellectual property rights of his friends in Hollywood
and Silicon Valley. Never mind the rights of all other
Americans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness –
rights that could be, to say the least, severely
compromised if they are murdered by one form of
Chinese-supplied malevolence or another. If protecting
those rights might interfere with trade relations,
though, it is pretty clear that, in the interest of
promoting the latter, the administration will confine
itself with respect to the former to rhetorical
hand-wringing and what Richard Perle calls diplomatic
“demarchemellows.”

The Clinton administration’s shameful, shortsighted
and increasingly dangerous policy toward China offers
Republican nominee Bob Dole one of his few opportunities
to differentiate his platform from that of the incumbent.
Interestingly, in July 1988, then-Senate Minority Leader
Dole helped fashion a denunciation of China’s missile
proliferation policy that was adopted by unanimously by
his colleagues. An equal show of determination now with
respect to the sale of Chinese missiles and related
technology that could be used to attack U.S. allies, the
15,000 naval and other personnel in the Persian Gulf and
perhaps even American airliners would offer a concrete
example of what is wrong with Bill Clinton’s foreign
policy — and what could be right about a Dole
presidency’s management of this critical portfolio.