Time for a Course Correction on China
(Washington, D.C.): Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s trip next
week to Communist China
should be the occasion for a wholesale reassessment of the Clinton Administration’s commitment
to “engagement” with the PRC on Chinese terms. After all, evidence continues to mount
that
China is pursuing strategic, economic and military policies inimical to vital American
interests. The United States may reap the whirlwind if it persists in pursuing approaches
that
ignore this reality — and, worse yet, that have the effect of further exacerbating it.
The Chinese Missile Threat
Perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence along these lines is China’s growing
propensity to
utilize its ballistic missile force as a coercive instrument. As Rep. Chris Cox, Republican of
California, noted in a February 18th speech in London: “In 1996, People’s
Liberation Army
Lieutenant General Xiong Guankai, Deputy Chief of Staff of the General Staff,
implied that the
PRC would destroy Los Angeles if the U.S. intervened to defend Taiwan from attack.”
Subsequently, Beijing launched four ballistic missiles into the waters off Taiwan’s main ports, at
the very least a act of economic warfare insofar as it disrupted commercial shipping in the area.
Last month, the Washington Times revealed that the United States has evidence
that the Chinese
have also conducted simulated missile attacks against U.S. forces and facilities in East
Asia
during recent exercises. What is more, the PRC’s missile threat to both American personnel and
assets and those of its allies has been sharply increased lately. The Financial Times
reported on
February 10th that a classified Pentagon report indicates that “The Chinese military
has stationed
150 to 200 M-9 and M-11 missiles in its southern regions aimed at Taiwan. It plans to increase
the number to 650 missiles over the next several years.”
Rep. Cox believes that this build-up is part of a PRC “effort to preempt U.S. efforts to
promote
theater missile defense in East Asia — efforts that are barely in the planning stage.” The Chinese
are no less adamantly opposed to the Clinton Administration’s purported interest in building a
limited national missile defense. After all, Beijing recognizes that effective
anti-missile defenses
could deny China a tool upon which it is increasingly relying to impose its will on others. 1
Missile-Related Threats
Indicative of the growing emphasis Beijing places on countering such defensive systems is the
less
visible deployment of a PLA-controlled satellite tracking station on the Tarawa atoll, in the island
state of Kiribali — just 500 miles south of a critical component of the Pentagon’s anti-missile
defense program, the Kwajalein Missile Test Range. With this installation, the PLA will be able
to gather vital data on U.S. naval forces operating in the region as well as information on, for
example, the velocities and trajectories of U.S. anti-missile tests in the region.
Interestingly, concerns about the danger posed by Chinese missiles to American security and
interests have just prompted the Clinton Administration to reject the sale of a $450
million
Hughes Space and Communications Company satellite to the PRC. The decision was
reportedly taken after the State and Defense Departments concluded, according to the New
York
Times, “the technology to place the satellite in orbit would help the Chinese military make
its
intercontinental ballistic missile [force] more accurate.” Indubitably, the Administration took this
step mindful of the harsh criticism it received over previous satellite deals that had such an
untoward effect, criticism most comprehensively offered in a report issued in December by a
bipartisan congressional committee chaired by Rep. Cox.
Such concerns can only be intensified by new intelligence information confirming what has
long
been suspected: China is assisting North Korea in developing long-range ballistic
missiles
capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction to U.S. soil. The Washington
Times noted
today that “Some Pentagon officials [fear] that militarily useful U.S. satellite technology, shared
improperly with China in 1995 and 1996, may have been given to the North Koreans.” The
strategic implications of this development are greatly magnified in light of Pyongyang’s
willingness to sell its missile systems to anyone with the cash to buy them.
Other Ominous Chinese Military Initiatives
Even the Clinton Commerce Department — the agency that has shown itself most determined
to
press ahead with high technology sales to China, irrespective of the associated costs to the
national security (for example, Commerce urged that Hughes’ latest satellite sale be
approved) —
is growing uneasy about the PRC’s behavior. A February 1999 report commissioned and
published by the Department’s Bureau of Export Administration says that “continued
pressure
on foreign [read, U.S.] high-tech firms to transfer advanced commercial
technologies, if
successful, could indirectly benefit China’s efforts to modernize its military.”
Then, there is the matter of China’s efforts to extend its physical control over strategic
waterways
of the Western Pacific. In addition to its Tarawa atoll venture, the PRC has expropriated islands
in the Paracels and Spratly chains. On these islands it is constructing facilities
that appear
designed to project Chinese power into international waters critical to the economies of Japan and
other Asian nations. As former Secretary of the Navy James Webb observed in the
op.ed. article in today’s New York Times: “China’s actions in a region that has relied
for decades
on a delicate balance of power should stir the United States to respond immediately.”
China’s ‘Trojan’ Gameplan
One obvious area for such a response would be to terminate the Clinton Administration’s
ambitious program of Sino-American defense exchanges. At a minimum, a number of
outrageous initiatives laid out in a “gameplan” for such military-to-military cooperation
issued by the Pentagon on February 1st should be scrapped in favor of a
modest set of
basically symbolic contacts.
Among the ill-advised planned activities are:
- Chinese participation in a “Pacific area special operations conference“;
- enhancing the logistical capabilities of the PLA by exposing a team from
its General Logistics
Department to modern U.S. programs and techniques. Given the PLA’s new forward-defense
doctrine aimed at extending its regional power through mixed land-sea-air ops, logistics
training is the last thing the DoD should share with China; - allowing the PLA to monitor advanced airborne operations at Fort Irwin,
including
demonstrations of future generation unmanned aerial vehicles; - advising the PLA about U.S. air doctrine;
- and exposing a Chinese team to U.S. chemical warfare defensive
capabilities.
In light of reports about China’s success in penetrating and stealing designs for America’s
most modern nuclear weapon from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the idea of holding
a
“PLA workshop” at Sandia’s Cooperative Monitoring Center should also be abandoned.
The Bottom Line
As a practical matter, the danger inherent in the foregoing and other Chinese
practices —
including espionage, technology theft, drug smuggling, gun-running, PLA incursions into Long
Beach and the Panama Canal and ominous PRC efforts to penetrate the U.S. capital markets as a
source of undisciplined, non-transparent hard currency streams (a source of revenue that has the
double benefits of underwriting the operations of the Chinese military-industrial complex while
recruiting unknowing American investors into a vast new “China lobby”) 2— are exacerbating
the dangers of U.S.-Chinese conflict.
Thus the United States is left with no choice: It must abandon “engagement” as practiced by
the
Clinton Administration in favor of a new approach, one that reasserts this country’s
commitment to protecting its friends and interests in Asia and thwarting Chinese policies
that threaten them. Such an alternative is made all the more practicable given the PRC’s
internal problems ranging from unemployment, labor and ethnic unrest and corruption.
Unfortunately, if Mrs. Albright has her way, she would surely prefer her trip to China to be
like
President Clinton’s visit last year — emphasizing the positive and downplaying, if not denying
outright, the negative. Under present circumstances, she must not be allowed to have her way.
The fact is that the People’s Republic of China is not now, and will never be, a reliable
“strategic partner” for the United States and the free world it is committed to protect.
1 See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Critical Mass #4: Emerging Missile Threat
Concentrates the Minds of U.S. Allies; Japanese Admiral Urges End to ABM
Treaty (No. 98-D 163, 15 September
1998).
2 See the Casey Institute’s Perspective entitled
Will China’s Latest Bond Offering Penetrate
U.S. Markets, Institutional Portfolios through A ‘Backdoor’? (
1998).
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