China US Relations
China, for most of its 3500 years of history, China led the world
in
agriculture, crafts, and science. It fell behind in the 19th century when
the
Industrial Revolution gave the West clear superiority in military and
economic
affairs. In the first half of the 20th century, China continued to
suffer from
major famines, civil unrest, military defeat, and foreign
occupation. After
World War II, the Communists under Mao Tse Tung
established a dictatorship that,
while ensuring autonomy of China, imposed
strict controls over all aspects of
like and cost the lives of tens of
millions of people. After 1978, his successor
Deng Xiaoping decentralized
economic decision making; output quadrupled in the
next 20 years. Political
controls remain tight at the same time economic
controls have been weakening.
Present issues in China are: incorporating Honk
Kong into the Chinese
system, closing down inefficient state-owned enterprises,
modernizing its
military, fighting corruption, and providing support to tens of
millions of
displaced workers. Today, China remains the major issue in U.S.
security
policy in Asia. The currently dominant security policy holds that China
has
essentially replaced the former Soviet Union as the chief strategic threat
to
the United States in the region, and the U.S. should essentially retain
its
containment strategy, with China as the new target. The basis of this
new
strategy includes a strengthening of cold war-era bilateral military
alliances
in with the development of a Theater-based Missile Defense system
that would
cover South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Revelations in early-to-mid
1999
indicating a pattern of Chinese nuclear weapons and missile technology
espionage
dating back from the 1970s to the mid-1990s has raised fears of
China as an
enemy to the highest level in 20 years. China's defense budget
has grown more
than 50% over the course of the 1990s and is said to have
increased 15% in 1999.
China's occupation of 11 islands and reefs in the
Spratlys, including Mischief
Reef, 378 kilometers from the Philippines is
also used as evidence of the
expansionist nature of China. The accusations of
espionage are more telling of
the weaknesses in U.S. security than of
providing any significant evidence that
the Chinese have used this data to
gain a qualitative strategic advantage
relative to the United States. A more
balanced conclusion would be that the
espionage reveals that the
privatization of the management of nuclear weapons
labs did not adequately
take into account the United States' national security
concerns. A report by
Clinton's Foreign Intelligence Advisory concluded that a
"culture of
arrogance" at the weapons labs had "conspired to
create an espionage scandal
waiting to happen" while another report by the
General Accounting Office
said that Los Alamos and Livermore had ignored
warnings about their security
for years. The most recent news about the
espionage situation with China has
involved a man name We Ho Lee. Lee was
terminated from his position at the
Los Alamos National Laboratory in March for
allegedly passing on classified
information on the W-88 nuclear warhead to
China. It is said that Lee
leaked the documents electronically onto an unsecured
computer network. Since
the furor over alleged Chinese espionage waned over the
summer, U.S.
intelligence and law enforcement officials narrowed the list of
nuclear
secrets that Beijing most likely stole while expanding the pool of
potential
suspects. After three years of a narrow focus on the Los Alamos
nuclear
weapons lab in New Mexico and Wen Ho Lee, officials now acknowledge that
the
classified information China most likely stole was accessible to hundreds
of
people at several federal facilities. A primary piece of evidence
continues to
be a 1988 Chinese document that suggests China stole valuable
information about
nearly every major weapon in the current U.S. nuclear
arsenal, including the
W-88 miniaturized submarine warhead that is one of
America's most sophisticated
weapons. This document was an important element
of the report issued by a
congressional committee chaired by Rep. Christopher
Cox on Chinese nuclear
espionage earlier this year. The Cox Report pointed to
that document as evidence
of the extent of China's spying at U.S. nuclear
labs. More recent assessments by
U.S. intelligence, however, conclude
that a large portion of the information in
that document most likely came
from publicly available documents, some of which
contained misinformation
about American weapons. In the case of the W-88,
intelligence officials now
believe the 1988 Chinese document, which U.S.
officials obtained in 1995,
contains only a couple of pieces of classified
information that could have
been stolen only from secure facilities. The growing
dominance of commercial
over security issues (as evident in the cases of the
missile launches by
Loral and Hughes) points to the dangers of having U.S.
business interests
shape peace and security issues toward China. Within the
Clinton
administration, a faction led by the Treasury and Commerce departments
and
promoted by transnational corporations opposed and continues to
oppose
security-based restrictions on trade and commerce, arguing that
China's partial
liberalization make it a land of enormous trade and
investment opportunity. The
London-based International Institute for
Strategic Studies concludes that
"China does not have the resources to
project a major conventional force
beyond its territory," and points to
China's engagement with multilateral
institutions and conventions as
commander-in-chief of U.S. Pacific forces,
Admiral Dennis Blair, has
declared that "China will not represent a serious
strategic threat to the
United States for at least twenty years." China has
demonstrated an
increasing willingness to participate in efforts to control the
proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction by subscribing to or signing since
1992:
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty,
Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions, and the Missile
Technology Control
Regime (MTCR). In addition, China has placed what the
U.S. views as the most
objectionable portion of its peaceful nuclear
technology agreement with Iran on
hold. Last month, China completed its first
successful test of a spacecraft for
manned flight. In an article written by
John Leicester which was drawn from the
internet, he states that "this test
has military implications because the
same low-power propulsion system used
to adjust the spacecraft's orbit in flight
could also be used to alter the
path of offensive missiles, helping them evade
proposed U.S. anti-missile
defense systems known as TMD and NMD. TMD, an acronym
for Theater Missile
Defense, and NMD, or National Missile Defense, would shoot
down incoming
missiles. The Clinton administration, with the support of
Congress, is
developing a limited national missile defense that could be
deployed as early
as 2005. It also is carrying out research with Japan on a
regional missile
defense. Leicester then goes on to explain that China has
condemned this
action and have said that this could spark a costly and dangerous
arms race.
I cannot help but think how hypocritical that sounds because of all
the
allegations of espionage on the part of China! China is also worried that
the
TMD technology could be passed on to Taiwan, allowing the island
that
Beijing regards as a renegade province to defend itself against
Chinese
missiles. The United States is trying to remedy this issue with
diplomacy
through having talks with Beijing aimed at bringing China into the
World Trade
Organization. China has been on a quest for membership in the
WTO for 13 years.
In order to join, China must reach agreements with the
United States, the
European Union, Canada, and other members for market
opening. As part of an
agreement with China on the United States' part,
Congress must grant Beijing
normal trade relations (NTR) status, formerly
known as most-favored nation
status. That would clear the way for China to
open its markets and would
guaranty Chinese goods the same low-tariff access
to U.S. markets as nearly
every other nation. In closing, I think it is a
good idea to make good with
China because it seems as if China is
becoming a very powerful nation. However,
we must increase security at our
most secret locations that contain sensitive
information because the kind of
information that has been leaked to China has
been spread throughout the
world long before China became one of our worries. We
should not allow this
situation to escalate high enough to cause another cold
war. If another cold
war happens, then it will just be a matter of time before
someone presses the
button that will causes our destruction.
Bibliography
Durant,
Will, Ariel Durant. The Story of Civilization: Part IX: The Age
of
Voltaire. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965. Frautschi, R.L.
Barron's
Simplified Approach to Voltaire: Candide. NewYork: Barron's
Educational Series,
Inc.,
1968.