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Special Report
While few have gone so far as Fitton with such complaints, criticism of U.S. transfers of sensitive technology to China is growing. Accuracy in Media, another Washington watchdog group, echoes Fitton on computer-technology transfers: "President Bush seems to have no clearer vision of what constitutes a strategically sensitive export than did Clinton. For example, Republicans harshly condemned Clinton for exporting high-performance computers to China, but President Bush has more than doubled the control threshold on these computers despite existing intelligence estimates that demonstrate how China's national security benefits from such acquisitions." Indeed, in his last days as a lame-duck president Clinton made exports of U.S. supercomputers easier by raising the export threshold from 28,000 millions of theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) to 85,000 MTOPS. Bush raised that limit to 190,000 MTOPS. A General Accounting Office (GAO) official tells Insight that the government hadn't done the necessary pre-export analysis and that an "interagency process" led by the Department of Defense should be in place for export controls. An April 2002 report by the GAO on computer-chip technology transfers to China claims that the government did not do an adequate analysis of the cumulative national-security effects of chip exports to China either, and that most export applications are simply approved. The policy is to approve applications unless it is shown that the items in question "would make a direct and significant contribution to electronic and antisubmarine warfare, intelligence gathering, power projection and air superiority." Never mind that, as a Pentagon official told the GAO, these chips can be used to improve China's capabilities for pre-emptive long-range precision strikes, information dominance, command and control and integrated air defense. Another reason the government got a bad grade from GAO was the fact that the Commerce Department hasn't conducted any end-user checks, so it's unknown if the exported technologies are used for military purposes, though experts guess they are. Richard Fisher, senior fellow with the Jamestown Foundation, tells Insight: "In general, I give the Bush administration great credit for solidifying the U.S. commitment to defend Taiwan, and to begin to increase U.S. defensive deployments to Asia to counter China's military buildup against Taiwan. However, it has yet to begin the logical extension of these policies: seeking to curtail major weapon-systems sales and dual-use technology sales to the PRC. The Bush administration has many officials who are aware of this threat and who are privately very concerned, but policy has yet to be enunciated." The administration is known to be full of Cold Warriors, and the Pentagon is led by Donald Rumsfeld, the most hawkish secretary of defense since Caspar Weinberger. Yet Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, in his former role as a private-sector attorney, helped move technology transfers as a lawyer for Loral Space & Communications Ltd., one of the two U.S. companies (the other one being Hughes Electronics Corp.) that contributed to the dramatic improvement of Chinese space-launch and satellite capabilities after large contributions to Clinton Democrats. When contacted by Insight, Feith's office would not address the technology-transfer issue. Fisher, who is editor of the Jamestown Foundation's fortnightly China Brief, also gives credit where one wouldn't expect it. "For all of its actions that aided the transfer of dual-use technologies that helped PLA [People's Liberation Army] modernization, the Clinton administration did endure a political storm to stop Israel's sale of the advanced PHALCON aerial radar to the PLA. The Bush administration has said little to nothing about Israel's more recent sale of communication satellites to the PRC, which definitely will be used by the PLA, or about the much more serious threat of Russian weapons and military-technology sales to the PRC." And Fisher also is concerned about the "gradual easing of restrictions" on civilian helicopters. He specifically mentioned the Sikorsky S-92, which Sikorsky wants to sell to China and which, Fisher tells Insight, could be mobilized for military purposes. James Lilley, U.S. ambassador to China in the George H.W. Bush administration and currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, tells Insight that ever since he got into government there has been a debate going on about where to draw that "blurred line" between civilian-only and dual-use technologies. When Ronald Reagan came into office, "we did relax sales" to arm China against the Soviet Union, Lilley said. Clinton went "much further," however, and "colluded with the Chinese." There was "no real balance or thoughtfulness" to Clinton's approach, Lilley adds. However, there's "no evidence" of a similar lack of balance in the current Bush administration, Lilley tells Insight. He also says that pressuring Russia to stop arms sales to China wouldn't work and that, since "this administration has not, will not," name China as an enemy, the kind of wholesale blocking of technology transfers that critics want is unrealistic. Lilley adds that trying to rectify Clinton-era mistakes might be like "clos[ing] the barn door after the horse has fled." As Fisher points out, China already is "becoming self-sufficient" in computer technology. Gary Schmitt, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer and executive director of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the Reagan years, tells Insight that while the Bush administration exercises "more care … on a day-to-day level" than the Clinton administration, it's still "on record" supporting the business wing of the GOP on the Export Administration Act (EAA). The original EAA expired in 1994 under the Clinton administration, and was kept alive by executive order. A reauthorization, the Export Administration Act of 2001, has languished in Congress. While the House version of the bill puts more emphasis on national security, the Senate version gives business interests priority, a Capitol Hill source tells Insight. This version would shift the dual-use approval process from the State Department back to the Commerce Department, as in the Clinton days. As Schmitt, now executive director of the Project for the New American Century, described it, the fight about the EAA has had a small band of Republican senators — including Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Richard Shelby of Alabama — fighting the business wing of the GOP led by Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas. "Most Republicans are as bad as Democrats," Schmitt laments. The reason the Senate version, pushed by "the embedded bureaucracy" and "business groups," is supported by the Bush administration, the Capitol Hill source tells Insight, is probably that the administration "is not getting both sides of the story." If it had taken a serious look at the issue, its approach might have been different, the source says. After Sept. 11, many on Capitol Hill were hoping that the terrorist attacks would be such a wake-up call that technology transfers would stop. But that remained a vain hope, the source adds. A Republican national-security analyst with whom Insight spoke insists the Chinese can get cutting-edge military technology, such as information warfare and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons from Russia. This defense analyst expresses concern that China could, using the best of Russian and U.S. technology, one day surpass both the United States and Russia in high-tech weaponry. Finally, he stresses the importance of reclaiming "the moral high ground." As he puts it, "We lost the moral high ground with Clinton" and we can't expect other countries not to proliferate weapons systems and technologies if that's exactly what the United States is doing or allowing to happen. Peter Huessy from the National Defense University Foundation tells Insight that while the Bush administration has done "a fairly good job" so far on proliferation issues, the most crucial factor at play is time. After "eight years of neglect" by an administration that was concentrating on "spin [and] winning the news cycle," the Bush administration needs time to rectify Clinton-era errors, Huessy says. As Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, has pointed out: "When American companies pay to launch satellites aboard Chinese rockets, they are directly financing the same entity that builds China's intercontinental ballistic missiles." Huessy tells Insight, however, that the Bush administration already has stopped the U.S. satellite launches in China. This is thanks in large part to a Russian-U.S. joint venture that uses Russian Proton and U.S. Atlas rocket technology to put satellites into orbit. Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), has both praise and criticism for the Bush administration concerning technology transfers to China. He says Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John R. Bolton has "made a point of enforcing nonproliferation sanctions" [see picture profile, July 22]. He credits Bolton with putting a stop to U.S. satellite launches in China. However, the Chinese firms sanctioned by the Bush administration for proliferation activities never made the Commerce Department's dual-use watch list of companies with which U.S. businesses should avoid dealing, Sokolski tells Insight. This might not be the result of conscious policy decisions, he adds, but at best it reveals a "lack of due diligence." A big problem, says Sokolski, is that we not only are transferring militarily useful end-products, but that we also are giving the Chinese "the tools for them to be able to make their own." A GAO official tells Insight that in addition to technology we are transferring know-how to the Chinese. However, he can't comment in detail because the GAO review on this problem still is ongoing. Sokolski also points out that a major cause of the China export troubles is the fact that U.S. companies dealing in high-tech satellites, computers and telecommunications not only see a market in China, but a cheap manufacturing base. Hughes and Loral, two of the main culprits, wanted U.S. satellites to be made in China, Sokolski says. This was blocked, thanks in part to Sokolski blowing the lid on the matter. Most defense experts with whom Insight spoke for this special report agree that the Bush administration has been far better on national-security issues than the Clinton administration, even on technology transfers. As Jack Spencer of the Heritage Foundation points out, however, the best guarantee of U.S. security in the long run is "a democratic China." But then, as Sen. Helms used to put it, "We'd have some ham and eggs — if we had some ham and if we had some eggs." Zoli Simon is an intern for Insight magazine. |
