China has grown from an agrarian backwater into the world’s second largest economy in the last twenty five years. While our yearly trade deficits with China have risen from zero to over 200 billion dollars a year, their country has been the world’s fastest growing economy. China has become a colossus precisely because of these trade deficits.
The global economy has been very good to China. Their country has been industrialized with someone else’s money, ours. Throughout the 1990s US corporations increased their factory investments in China, seeking an endless supply of cheap labor. The United States has transferred over one trillion dollars of hard currency to China since 1993. This investment has fueled the most rapid economic expansion in the history of the world.
And with this new wealth, China has sought military parity with the United States.
However, they could not modernize their armed forces without US expertise. Several US companies wanted to sell weapons and technology to the Chinese, but the sales were prohibited by law. Economic sanctions for the Tiananmen Square massacre and restrictions on technology exports prevented US corporations from selling China the armaments they wanted.
The Chinese turned to a shadowy cast of characters that funneled millions of dollars into Democratic Party campaign coffers. These illegal donations were instrumental in re-electing Bill Clinton in 1996. President Clinton took contributions he knew came from China, and played another angle as well.
In return for campaign contributions, the Clinton administration relaxed export controls and allowed corporations to decide on their own if their technology transfers were legal or not. When easing restrictions wasn’t enough, Clinton signed waivers that simply circumvented the law. The President’s waivers allowed the export of missile technology, defense electronics, and even a communications system for the Chinese Air Force.
In one extraordinary case of corruption, the CEOs of Loral and Hughes each donated over one million dollars to Clinton’s re-election campaign. These companies had an interest in seeing China develop reliable missiles to loft their satellites into orbit. Both companies were allowed to upgrade the launching and guidance of Chinese missile systems.
In June of 1995, the CIA learned that China had stolen the crown jewels of our nuclear arsenal, including the neutron bomb and the W-88 miniaturized warhead. Later that year National Security Advisor Anthony Lake was briefed on the thefts. He was quickly replaced on the Security Council by Sandy Berger, a former lobbyist for Chinese interests.
In June of 1996, before Bill Clinton’s re-election, the FBI opened a formal investigation into the theft of US nuclear weapon designs.
When the press learned that China had stolen nuclear weapon designs from US research labs, the Clinton administration downplayed and even denied the reports. But this scandal was too big to ignore, and Congress began a formal investigation by forming the Cox committee. The administration was forced to reveal the extent of Chinas nuclear espionage, while insisting that Clinton was not told about the thefts until 1998, three years after the fact.
The Cox Committee report was released early in 1999. It confirmed that China had stolen the neutron bomb design and the W-88 miniaturized warhead. The W-88 would allow China to field smaller, mobile missiles and carry multiple warheads on larger missiles. In addition, the Cox report proved that US corporations illegally transferred “missile design information and know-how“. Chief among the offenders were Loral and Hughes.
On October 1st, 1999, the fiftieth anniversary of China‘s communist takeover, a new missile was paraded through the streets of Beijing. The DF-31 is a modern, mobile nuclear missile capable of hitting targets in the United States. The rocket motor and guidance systems were made possible by Loral and Hughes. The nuclear warhead is a copy of the W-88, stolen from the US.
The Chinese have not disguised their plans to use these weapons.
In March of 1996, on the eve of Taiwan’s first democratic elections, China used the threat of force to intimidate the island nation into electing a pro-Beijing candidate. Military maneuvers included bombing runs and launching ballistic missiles that impacted within twenty miles of the island. When the United States sent an aircraft carrier into the Taiwan straits, a Chinese general threatened to “rain down nukes upon Los Angeles“.
In the summer of 1999 the pro-independence leadership of Taiwan called for talks with China on a state-to-state basis. The enraged Chinese demanded that Taiwan enter unification talks or face attack. A communist Party approved newspaper published a plan to conquer Taiwan. It involved using neutron bombs against any Taiwanese resistance and a nuclear standoff with the United States.
The incoming Bush administration confronted this new China when a US Navy surveillance plane was damaged in a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter. The US aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing on a Chinese island. 24 crewmen were held for eleven days and repeatedly interrogated by PLA soldiers.
President Bush initially threatened to withdraw China‘s normal trade status and block entry into the WTO if the airmen were not released. Instead the Bush administration appeased China‘s demands by apologizing for the dead fighter pilot that caused the collision, and for the reconnaissance plane landing on Chinese soil without permission. Immediately after the crisis, the administration signaled that there would be no long term damage to US-China relations.
True to his word, President Bush granted China normal trade status after the spy plane incident. Nor has his administration investigated, or even mentioned, the China scandals of the Clinton era. While US warplanes were bombing Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, President Bush did not miss a chance to attend a summit in China, even appearing on national television wearing traditional Chinese robes.
In July of 2005, the Dean of China’s National Defense University threatened nuclear retaliation against the United States in a conflict over Taiwan. Major General Zhu Chenghu was quoted as saying, “If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons”. “We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds … of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”
In October of 2006, China fired a high-powered ground based laser at a US satellite. The Pentagon’s National Reconnaissance Office Director Donald Kerr acknowledged the incident, and a Defense Department report confirmed that the satellite was blinded during the attack. The White house ordered the Pentagon to downplay this provocation by China, but Military sources admit that there have been several “tests” in recent years.
This year China’s Armed Forces have upped the ante. In January 2007 China successfully used a missile to destroy a satellite orbiting over 500 miles above the Earth. This test was a demonstration of China’s ability to destroy our reconnaissance satellites.
The test was also illegal, according to international law. The United States logged a formal diplomatic protest, and White House Press secretary Tony Snow said,”We are aware of it and we are concerned, and we made it known”. And that’s about all the Bush administration did.
As this essay is being written, plans are being finalized to install a nuclear hotline between the Pentagon and China’s Ministry of Defense.
Most Americans have forgotten that we have already fought a war against the Chinese. The Korean War was fought between US troops and the Chinese People’s “Volunteer” Army. This army of over 2 million Chinese was constituted separately so China could avoid declaring an official war against the United States.
Communist China is not our ally, nor have they pretended to be friendly to the United states. On the one hand China is re-emerging as a dangerous, belligerent enemy. While our political establishment insists China is benign, and a “valuable trading partner”.
Why this schizophrenia in US/China relations?
The fact is, the United States has very little leverage over China. In the event of an economic crisis or military confrontation, the Chinese could simply sell their huge dollar reserves, and cause our currency to collapse. Even worse, they could seize all US assets in their country, this would bankrupt many of our own corporations that manufacture exclusively in China.
At this point the Bush administration has no choice but to maintain a pro-China policy, or prepare the American People for a confrontation with Beijing. Nevertheless, the White House willingly kow-tows to China because they are in hock to the same corporate interests that corrupted Bill Clinton. China has not been appeased by US Presidents seeking “engagement”, they have been industrialized by our own corporations, seeking profits.
American companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying our elected officials to pass free trade agreements and legalize technology exports. A few American stockholders have made fortunes modernizing China‘s armed forces, still more US companies have built factories in China. These factories and an endless supply of cheap labor have earned huge profits for these investors.
Protecting these profits is America‘s China policy.
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The Populist @ October 28, 2007