Secret Weapon Inside Pentagon, A Scholar Shapes Views of China

Taiwan DC via WSJ ^ | September 08, 2005 | By NEIL KING JR.

[maui_hawaii]

Beijing, Mr. Pillsbury Says, Sees U.S. as Military Foe; An Optimist Turns Gloomy His Direct Line to Top Aides

WASHINGTON -- Michael Pillsbury, influential Pentagon adviser and former China lover, believes most Americans have China all wrong. They think of the place as an inherently gentle country intent on economic prosperity.

In that camp he lumps the lower ranks of the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, most U.S. investors and the majority of American China scholars, whom he chides as "panda huggers." Mr. Pillsbury says his mission is to assure that the Defense Department doesn't fall into the same trap. "Beijing sees the U.S. as an inevitable foe, and is planning accordingly," warns the 60-year-old China expert. "We'd be remiss not to take that into account."

Mr. Pillsbury's 35-year China odyssey, from fondness to suspicion, parallels Washington's own hot and cold relations with Beijing -- from the diplomatic warming of the 1970s, through the shock and disillusionment of the post-Tiananmen Square era, to today's growing economic and political tensions. That's hardly a coincidence: Whether in public or in the policy-making shadows, Mr. Pillsbury has been a persistent force in shaping official American perceptions of a nation increasingly seen as the world's fastest-rising power.

Washington these days is a welter of emotions on China, many of them heightened by the recent furor over Cnooc Ltd.'s failed bid to buy American oil company Unocal Corp. President Bush came to office calling China a "strategic competitor." He now calls relations with China "good" but "complex." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has lately taken a dimmer view of China than her predecessor, Colin Powell, saying it remains unclear whether China will play a positive role in the world.

Thanks in part to Mr. Pillsbury's nudging, the Pentagon has staked out a particularly wary view of Beijing's global intentions. "We must start with the acknowledgement, at least, that we are unprepared to understand Chinese thinking," Mr. Pillsbury says. "And then we must acknowledge that we are facing in China what may become the largest challenge in our nation's history."

A lanky patrician with bright blue eyes, combed-back gray hair and a ready laugh, Mr. Pillsbury is known around the Pentagon as the Sphinx. Independently wealthy, he spends most days working in his two-story brownstone near the Capitol. He appears on no public Defense Department roster, and top officials decline to speak on the record about his work, noting that he is merely one of hundreds of paid consultants.

Yet Mr. Pillsbury, a fluent Mandarin speaker and author of three esoteric books on Chinese military strategy, has become one of the Pentagon's most influential advisers on China, with a direct line to many of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's top aides. After decades spent nurturing contacts within China's military, Mr. Pillsbury has amassed mounds of Chinese-language military texts and interviewed their authors to get a grip on China's long-term military aims. His conclusion has rattled many in Washington: China sees the U.S. as a military

rival."Mike's core insight has been to plumb the subterranean anti-American feelings within China's military," says Daniel Blumenthal, a China specialist at the Defense Department until late last year and now a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "He takes the Chinese at their word, and that has given him real influence within the Pentagon."

Mr. Rumsfeld has sharpened his posture on China in recent months. In June, he ruffled feathers in Asia when he used an annual security forum in Singapore to charge that China's military buildup could upset the region's delicate security balance. The Pentagon then upped the ante with a report warning that the Chinese military nurtures ambitions well beyond defending its historical claim to Taiwan. The report laid out five "pathways" that could lead China to develop "more assertive foreign and security policies" or even provoke small wars to secure its growing energy needs. U.S. China experts noted that these and other passages seemed lifted straight from Mr. Pillsbury's scholarly work.

The Chinese government disputes Mr. Pillsbury's assessments, as well as the Pentagon's assertion that Beijing is dramatically increasing its military spending. Asked to comment on Mr. Pillsbury, the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement that "any words or actions that fabricate and drum up China's military threat are detrimental to regional peace and stability."

Mr. Pillsbury's numerous critics call him a charming but combative China hawk whose work has overblown the thoughts and writings of a small cadre of Chinese military officials. Even admirers note the intensity with which he defends his views. "Michael has played a singularly important role in surfacing Chinese attitudes toward the U.S.," says Kurt Campbell, the Pentagon's top Asia hand during the Clinton administration. "But as with all brilliance, there is also a touch of madness."

Chu Shulong, a leading scholar on U.S.-China relations at Tsinghua University's Institute of Strategic Studies in Beijing, questions Mr. Pillsbury's conclusions. "All these ideas of the rising power and inevitable conflict, I'm afraid, are very out of date," he says, asserting that China is above all intent on assuring its economic well-being. Mr. Pillsbury, who has nurtured ties with the Chinese military since the early 1970s, insists he remains open-minded. "My core doctrine is that the Chinese think differently than we think they do and that it's imperative we understand what motivates them," he sa

ys.Chinese writings, Mr. Pillsbury says, show a military establishment obsessed with the inevitable decline of the U.S. and China's commensurate rise. On the economic front, he cautions that Americans shouldn't be taken in by the profusion of fast-food restaurants in China or other signs that make China look like the West. Beneath the growing trade ties with U.S., he says, runs a nationalistic fervor that could take American investors by surprise.

Mr. Pillsbury got the China bug as an undergraduate in the early 1960s, and later spent two years in Taiwan while earning a doctorate in Chinese studies from Columbia University. In late 1972, just months after President Nixon's famous trip to China, Mr. Pillsbury joined Rand Corp. as a 27-year-old China scholar. At the think tank, he began to do classified work for the U.S. government.

By then, Mr. Pillsbury had already made his first contacts with the Chinese military through a friendship with a People's Liberation Army general, Zhang Wutang, who was posted at the United Nations. He used the contact to understand PLA aspirations, and then passed along his conclusions to the Pentagon and the CIA in a series of secret memos. "I was giddy with the Confucian classics and all the magnificence of Chinese culture," he says.

He earned his first acclaim -- and a handwritten letter from then California Gov. Ronald Reagan -- with a 1975 essay in Foreign Policy magazine urging the U.S. to deter Moscow by establishing military and intelligence ties with China. At the time, that idea was almost scandalous. Later, under Presidents Carter and Reagan, such liaisons became a standard part of U.S.-China relations.

Mr. Pillsbury came slowly to what he calls his epiphany on China. Through the Reagan and first Bush administrations, he hopped between jobs at the Pentagon and the Senate, working to enhance military and intelligence cooperation with Beijing. In the 1980s, the U.S. began selling China powerful new torpedoes, upgrades for its jet fighters and advanced electronics for artillery -- arms sales that officials say Mr. Pillsbury helped push.

Then in early May 1989, Mr. Pillsbury flew to Beijing for a low-key military mission, arriving just as the Tiananmen protests picked up steam. He was unsettled by the ruthless crackdown that ensued, and also by how Chinese authorities blamed the U.S. for helping foment the dissent. "I was stunned," he says. "Even some friends in the Chinese military that I'd known for years began to describe us as a mortal enemy, an evil force

."Following Tiananmen, Mr. Pillsbury's conclusions on China became notably darker. In one 1993 study, he noted: "China has the advantage that many experts on Chinese affairs...testify soothingly that China today is a satisfied power which deeply desires a peaceful environment in which to develop its economy. They put the burden of proof on others, defying pessimists to prove that China may ever become hypernationalistic or aggressive."

An inveterate free-lancer, Mr. Pillsbury has never had to worry about steady employment. He's a member of the Pillsbury flour family, and his wealth has allowed him to pursue his research despite a knack for championing unpopular causes and for landing in political scrapes. Once, while helping funnel weapons to anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan and Angola in the 1980s, he lost and regained his security clearance amid allegations of leaking secret information to the press.

Mr. Pillsbury has also avidly collected high-level protectors, counting Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and retired North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms among his patrons. His long-time mentor and current employer is the Pentagon's Andrew Marshall, a mercurial figure who at 83 still runs the department's long-term planning shop, the Office of Net Assessment.

In early 1995, Mr. Marshall sent Mr. Pillsbury to Beijing to gather Chinese military writings. The Pentagon by then was promoting a new generation of heavily computerized military hardware, and Mr. Marshall wanted to see what the Chinese made of this so-called revolution in military affairs. Mr. Pillsbury interviewed dozens of authors, and returned after several trips with crates of books and journals, more than 500 volumes in all. The haul formed the core of his first two books, both published by the Pentagon's National Defense University.

Hardly light reading, the books got glowing reviews from several neoconservative thinkers, including Paul Wolfowitz, Mr. Rumsfeld's former top aide and now president of the World Bank. In his 1997 "Chinese Views of Future Warfare," Mr. Pillsbury portrays a military hierarchy fascinated with information warfare and the need for weapons systems to deliver "acupuncture" strikes and take out satellites. A particular obsession: what he claims to be the Chinese pursuit of "shashoujian," or a secret "assassin's weapon" that China can use to surprise a more powerful opponent.

"Mike can make a good case that the Chinese are developing submarines to sink our aircraft carriers or missiles to take out our satellites," says James Lilly, a former CIA station chief who served as ambassador to China in the early 1990s. "His whole point is, 'Pay attention. Listen to what they are saying.'" China's long-term strategy, Mr. Pillsbury argues, is to amass its strengths while attracting as little attention as possible.

He is increasingly convinced that China's military thinkers and strategists derive much of their guidance and inspiration from China's Warring States period, an era of pre-unification strife about 2,300 years ago. This is the thesis of his latest book, "The Future of China's Ancient Strategy," which the Pentagon plans to publish this fall. Its core assertion is that China's history and culture posit the existence of a "hegemon" -- these days, the United States -- that must be defeated over time.

After President Bush took office in 2001, officials in the Defense Department were quick to embrace Mr. Pillsbury's warnings on China. His prominence became abundantly clear when China's then-vice president, Hu Jintao, stopped by the Pentagon in May 2002 to visit Secretary Rumsfeld. The State Department had opposed the meeting, arguing that the Defense Department was not the proper place for the visit of a soon-to-be president of China. When Mr. Hu's party arrived, Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed the State Department interpreter and had Mr. Pillsbury do the job instead. Defense Department officials, while declining to elaborate, say that Mr. Pillsbury is now being considered for a full-time post at the Pentagon.

Chinese officials are also keeping tabs on Mr. Pillsbury. In June, the Communist Party's People's Daily tagged the China expert as the main force behind the Pentagon's recent report on the Chinese military. "Mike Pillsbury always sits beside Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld," at policy sessions on China, the story said.

[maui_hawaii]

He is a realist. One of my favorite people ever. We think very much alike regarding China.

Unlike what many people say, he's not a China basher. He just reveals whats really going on.

The truth speaks for itself.

[Tulsa Ramjet]

"Beijing sees the U.S. as an inevitable foe, and is planning accordingly," warns the 60-year-old China expert.

Hmmm....are we planning accordingly?

[Tench_Coxe]

"Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" comes to mind.

[maui_hawaii]

We are trying I believe.

As stated in the article he's not the king of the show. Many people oppose him and his positions (for whatever motive).

[Regulator]

Lotsa Panda Huggers be in here soon, sayin' how wrooong he is, 'cuz they shop at Wal-Mart and they know...just know...that China is their buddy.

Reality's just no fun. Specially when it means you have to pay 20 bucks more for that boom box.

[maui_hawaii]

Realist are the new in crowd.

This same guy went to great lengths in a speech I once watched about how China watchers are split into two categories. The red team and the blue team. Either pro or con...

Then he went on to call the whole affair a load of BS...that its not so simple.

He is a very straight shooter. Thats why I like him. I might be accused of being a geek, but I am huge fan of his. I have put in 12 years of my own studying China and had many of the same opinions regarding China... then I happened across his books, tv appearances etc... WOW. Someone agreed with me...

My own various corporate bosses that I've had half the time want (but then again don't want) the whole story....

[maui_hawaii]

The problem with the panda huggin crowd is they can't back up their position with facts, only money.

[RockyMtnMan]

Human nature requires us to compete over scarce resources and you cannot fault the Chinese in that regard. They want to be seen as equals in a world where they have allowed themselves to fall behind economically and culturally. Communism has isolated them and will continue to do so until they realize and accept western values as fundamental to the human condition.

Freedom, opportunity and expression can never be dictated by the state with a positive result.

[Wolverine]

CHINESE ESPIONAGE AND NATIONAL SECURITY
(from the Congressional Record, Proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives)                                       Monday, June 7, 1999

 

It was this government and this administration that failed the American people, and the American people need to see the factual information.

With that in mind, Mr. Speaker, the following two charts are now available on my web site nationally:

The first chart, Mr. Speaker, for the first time ever gives the complete linkage between those agencies and entities of the Peoples Liberation Army and the Central Military Commission of the PLA which are all indicated by the red boxes, and you cannot read them, our colleagues cannot read them, but you can get this off of our web site, and I have offered to give copies of this chart in a smaller form to
every Member of Congress regardless of party.

 

Curt Weldon is no stranger to charts:

 

The China Connection

http://web.archive.org/web/20000819124046/www.house.gov/curtweldon/chinaconnect.pdf

Sources and References for Chart 1 (05/27/99)

 

Liberalized / Decontrolled Technologies To Peoples Republic of China

http://web.archive.org/web/20000819124114/www.house.gov/curtweldon/timeline.pdf

 

 

What the Charts Show

The two charts together reveal, among other things:

• A systematic, well planned effort by the Chinese military at the highest levels to target and acquire technology for military modernization.
  
• That the targeting effort and financing to acquire the technology and buy influence at the highest levels of US Government were planned and implemented by Chinese military Intelligence through the second department under the General Staff Department (GSD).
  
• That the Chinese military acquired many of the technologies over the past seven years,   although many of them had been targeted for acquisition for more than a quarter century.
  
• That the Chinese military set up a series of front companies and cut-outs to mask its technology targeting efforts and to launder money to hide its origin.  Chinese military intelligence even resorted to the use of companies and bank accounts of the infamous Macau and Hong Kong Chinese Triad for this purpose.
  
• That even after the US Government learned of the diversion of the W-88 nuclear warhead design in late 1995 into 1996, the Clinton Administration continued to liberalize export controls on such sensitive technologies as computers, encryption, machine tools, telecommunications, stealth technologies, space launch technologies, satellites, the array of hot section technologies to improve the performance and life of Jet engines, and high temperature furnaces essential for the production of components for missiles and nuclear weapons.
  
  
  • Despite knowledge of the U.S. designs for nuclear warheads, for example, the     Clinton Administration still undertook a serious effort to redefine supercomputers to allow for increased exports of high performance computers to China.  Rationale was not based on strategic criteria.  Instead, it was governed by economic considerations of a few companies whose executives had supported President Clinton in 1992 and again in 1996.
    
  • A September 1993 letter from President Clinton to Silicon Graphics CEO Edward McCracken, for example, promised to liberalize export controls of computers, machine tools, and telecommunications technologies (attached).
    
  • In another instance, one National Security Council official in March 1998 -- some two years after knowledge of the W-88 and other U.S. nuclear warhead design diversions -- had proposed blanket waivers for satellite sales to China in exchange for China joining the Missile Technology Regime.
    
• That the Clinton-Gore Administration certified China in January 1998 to receive nuclear technology for being in compliance with non-proliferation regimes, even though there was strong evidence that the Chinese government was continuing its proliferation activities with Iran, North Korea, Syria, Pakistan, and Libya.  Such proliferation activities, which were contrary to U.S.-Chinese understandings, continue unabated to this day.
  
• That the cumulative impact of these targeted technologies now permit China to:
  
  
  • Develop reliable Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with insights into MIRVing that ICBM force.
    
  • Miniaturize nuclear warheads.
    
  • Implement a command and control structure for its growing ICBM force.
    
  • Develop an integrated command, control, communications, computer and intelligence encrypted network to enable better military command and control over vast areas, even beyond China itself.
    
  • Improve power projection for its surface fleets, submarines, and long-range cruise missiles capable of hitting not only Taiwan, but also Japan from mainland China.
    
  • Produce more proficient fighter and bomber aircraft capable of greater distances and speeds.
    
• That the administration as early as 1994 systematically dismantled its system of monitoring the influx of Chinese and other foreign nationals visiting U.S. high technology companies, including our nuclear weapons labs.  As a result, there are many tens of thousands of Chinese in the United States and we don't know where they are or what they are doing.
  
  
  • In fact, it wasn't until this year just prior to public revelations of alleged Chinese espionage in our nation's nuclear weapons labs that the Energy Department decided to seek export licenses from the Commerce Department for foreign national visits.  Yet, the requirement had always been law.  And where was the Commerce Department in not forcing the issue with the Energy Department?
    
• The notion that Chinese and other foreign nationals would be allowed access to information or to the facilities where U.S. nuclear weapons were developed is unconscionable.  It is seriously doubtful that the Chinese labs would allow U.S. scientists into their nuclear weapons labs.

Cox Report Details Damage to U.S. National Security

By Congressman Curt WeldonThe COX REPORT: http://tinyurl.com/c3bl7

---

Above...overshadowed by the Monica Legacy of bill clinton.

[maui_hawaii]

Human nature requires us to compete over scarce resources and you cannot fault the Chinese in that regard.

One cannot fault anyone for that, but one can definately fault them for drawing it as a win-lose zero sum proposition.

[The Westerner]

The goal of Communism has always been the defeat of the West, i.e. freedom and Capitalism.

China combines ancient Chinese tactics with modern day global politik.

We should never have befriended this country. We should have continued the Cold War mentality of not dealing with any Communist country. This Mr. Pillsbury has taken the U.S. on a journey that will lead to our defeat, most likely, even though he has belatedly learned his lesson.

[Tailgunner Joe]

Chinese Views of Future Warfare

[RockyMtnMan]

I hope in that regard their long established cultural values and love of life would override such an irrational conclusion. Unfortunately the communists that run the government are power hungry and potentially indifferent to the human cost of a large exchange. We all know what fanatics can and will do to see their "vision" realized.

[terycarl]

china, like everyone else in this world, has to realize that it will either capitulate to he demands of a CIVILIZED society or be ostracised from the world group of nations..... the minor countries are irrelevant, but china must be brought to the understanding that they will comply or cease to exist. There is no time left in history to fool around with non compliants...either join the rest of the world, or cease to exist!!!!!

[Wolverine]

 

Weldon Article from the RNC's Rising Tide: The China Connection -- Why Clinton-Gore Cannot Be Trusted with National Security (09/28/99)

http://web.archive.org/web/20000129022600/www.house.gov/curtweldon/oped_sum99.htm

Published in the Summer 1999 

Issue of the RNC's Rising Tide

The China Connection
Why Clinton-Gore Cannot Be Trusted with National Security

By Congressman Curt Weldon

             The Chinese espionage scandal and wholesale auctioning of sensitive technologies to China should erase any doubt in the minds of Americans that President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore are not to be trusted with our country's national security.  

             The dark legacy left by the Clinton-Gore Administration will place the lives of Americans at greater risk for generations to come.  Under the Clinton-Gore watch China stole classified thermonuclear weapons information, stole electromagnetic weapons technology that it can use to attack U.S. satellites and missiles, and stole classified research that can be used to detect and threaten our previously invulnerable nuclear submarines.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  

            But China did more than just steal information form the United States.  Through a complex system of influence peddling and campaign contributions, China was also able to obtain relaxations on exports on a wide variety of sensitive technologies.  In other words, the Clinton-Gore Administration gave away sensitive technologies to China in order to please big donors to the Democrat Party.     

             The relaxation of export controls, removal of national security agencies from the export approval process, and the dissolution of an international forum for controlling the transfer of military technologies under the Clinton-Gore Administration created an environment ripe for mistakes and abuse.  It was the equivalent of setting out the welcome mat for the Chinese to gain access -- completely legally -- to our most sensitive technologies.  

             And the Chinese certainly took advantage of the situation.  China -- which until 1996 had no high-performance computers to help design nuclear weapons -- had over 600 high performance computers in 1998, all originating from the United States.  The Chinese have also obtained access to precision machine tools that it diverted to build military aircraft, cruise missiles, and nuclear weapons.

               The seriousness of this matter is compounded by the fact that China is one of the world's worst proliferators of military technologies.  It is likely that this technology will soon find its way into the hands of countries like North Korea, Iran, and Iraq.

              Given the serious ramifications of the findings and recommendations of the bipartisan Cox Report, one would think that the American people could expect a serious, thoughtful response from the Clinton-Gore Administration.  Instead, all we have seen are Administration attempts to "spin" the report and attempts to convince the American public that the President and Vice-President bear no responsibility for what has happened.

                 But they do.  It was the Clinton-Gore Administration that eliminated FBI background checks at some of our most sensitive weapons laboratories.  It was the Clinton-Gore Administration that eliminated color-coded employee ID badges -- denoting clearance levels -- at classified Department of Energy laboratories.  It was the Clinton-Gore Administration that reinstated the security clearance of an employee being investigated for giving out sensitive and classified information.  And it was the Clinton-Gore Administration that allowed the exports of these sensitive technologies. 

                But President Clinton and Vice President Gore have spent more energy trying to cover their butts than closing the barn door.  The Administration has cracked down on the brave employees within the Departments of Defense and Energy who blew the whistle on the ineptitude of Clinton's political appointees and flawed policy toward China.  Meanwhile, the people who bear the blame for the damage to our national security are walking away scott-free.

                  It is important to note, however, that the recent scandal does not mean that we should completely cut off relations with China or end trade.  The United States can continue to engage in meaningful trade relations and the export of materials to China.  But we have to be smart about it.  We can't be giving China access to technologies that endanger our national security.  The Clinton-Gore Administration left the flood gates wide open.  There is a middle ground and we need to find it.  On the issue of our political relations with China, we need to return to Ronald Reagan's principled approach to foreign policy: trust but verify.  

                  If the Clinton-Gore Chinese espionage has taught us anything, we must learn that our military secrets and technology require constant vigilance and safeguarding.  And President Clinton and Vice President Gore are not to be trusted with that oversight. XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Weldon Article from Insight Magazine: Newstand Nukes -- DOE Secretary Hazel O'Leary gave away the W-87 diagram to U.S. News and World Report; Classified design of nuclear warhead made availble to every foreign intelligence agency (8/3/99) http://web.archive.org/web/20000128233512/www.house.gov/curtweldon/oped_082399.htm

[maui_hawaii]

Have you read it?

[JSteff]

"Mr. Pillsbury had already made his first contacts with the Chinese military through a friendship with a People's Liberation Army general, Zhang Wutang, who was posted at the United Nations."

So do we trust this guy or is he another "long term" plant? I hope Rumsfeld had someone else listening when he had Mr. Pillsbury translating for him.

[maui_hawaii]

Please. Plant? Yeah whatever. Rumsfeld himself might be an Al Quaeda plant as well...

Trust me, when they all talk, people listen to every word. And most of it has been discussed for months before it evr gets to Rummy.

[Cleburne]

The problem is China thinks the same thing about us- a bunch of uncivilized ignorant people who are mostly obsessed with sex, money, drugs, and power, which isn't true of course... Seriously, China is a massive threat precisely because it is a major civilization. It is also the only remaining Communist state that has the possibility of becoming a super-power, and is perhaps the only other state period that could, in the not so distant future, challenge America for world hegemony. China also has a strong undercurrent of xenophobia- they regard Han civilization as superior, and that would be true even without Communism.