The Buying
While the Cox report harps on spying, what China stole is dwarfed by what it got legally. It's no secret that once Washington threw open the doors 20 years ago, a lot of Chinese exploited this country's freedom to soak up material from unclassified publications, study at the best universities, download technical reports from the Net. Beijing skillfully stitched the tidbits together into the rudiments of a new nuclear arsenal. The high-tech revolution here has moved cutting-edge military information into the civilian mainstream, making a lot of dangerous know-how available to potential enemies. That's the price of the free flow of information in an open society.
Over the same period, four Presidents have pushed to stoke up trade with China for rich profits for the U.S. economy. The hard part is making sure the U.S. doesn't sell the Chinese goods they could turn to military use. Sensibly regulated exports actually boost American security indirectly by promoting closer ties and helping ensure that China doesn't make deals with less conscientious countries.
But in balancing these interests, the Clinton Administration is hardly the first to take off the security brake. It was Ronald Reagan who allowed U.S. satellites to be lofted into space by Chinese rockets after the Challenger blew up and Europe's aerospace company charged too much. Pressed by American satellite companies, Bush continued to approve still more launches even after sanctions were imposed for the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, and when Clinton came in eager to make trade a centerpiece of foreign policy, Big Business worked him to go further, faster. According to the report, the chiefs of Hughes and Loral, who together won five licenses, dropped by the White House, sat on advisory panels and lobbied hard for the Administration to move the whole licensing procedure to Commerce, which the White House pretty much did in 1996.
The result: after Hughes and Loral lost three satellites when the Long March rockets boosting them into space blew up, the Cox report says, they "acted without the legally required license" as they worked out the trouble with the Chinese. In the process, says the report, they gave away information on guidance systems that could boost the accuracy of Chinese ballistic missiles. Both Hughes and Loral deny they violated export-control law or transferred sensitive information. Congress reacted last winter by ordering the licensing process back to State.
All told, successive Administrations steadily relaxed export controls on a slew of computers, machine tools and high-end electronics that China could covertly put to forbidden military use. These "dual-use" sales have long eluded a neat solution: security hawks deride pro-traders as "rope sellers"--capitalists eager to sell communists the rope to hang us with. Under the business-first mantra of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, the Clinton Administration raised the commercial imperative to new heights, shifting decisions from the traditional "no, but ..." assumption that tech trade is a security risk unless proved otherwise to the "yes, but ..." preference for business first. Corporations were allowed to police their own security; the downsizing Defense Department marketed obsolete equipment as scrap, and the Chinese snapped it up.
Some critics contend that the wholesale auction on generous business contributions to presidential-campaign treasuries, Republican and Democratic alike, tipped the U.S. too far from proper vigilance. This Administration insists it has tried hard to balance a nearly impossible equation that demands limitless access to Chinese markets for American firms and limited rights for technology transfer. That dilemma, in a sense, is America's. It is extremely difficult to keep technology out of China's hands. If the U.S. doesn't sell it, another country will. Evidence that Beijing diverts items to the military is sketchy. And, intelligence officials say, the U.S. actually gains access to China's secrets when it installs or monitors its most sensitive equipment.
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