Intelligence

China’s cyber army is preparing to march on America, says Pentagon

China’s cyber army is preparing to march on America, says Pentagon - Times Online

Tim Reid in Washington Chinese military hackers have prepared a detailed plan to disable America’s aircraft battle carrier fleet with a devastating cyber attack, according to a Pentagon report obtained by The Times.

The blueprint for such an assault, drawn up by two hackers working for the
People’s Liberation Army (PLA), is part of an aggressive push by Beijing to
achieve “electronic dominance” over each of its global rivals by 2050,
particularly the US, Britain, Russia and South Korea.

China’s ambitions extend to crippling an enemy’s financial, military and
communications capabilities early in a conflict, according to military
documents and generals’ speeches that are being analysed by US intelligence
officials. Describing what is in effect a new arms race, a Pentagon
assessment states that China’s military regards offensive computer
operations as “critical to seize the initiative” in the first stage of a war.

The plan to cripple the US aircraft carrier battle groups was authored by two
PLA air force officials, Sun Yiming and Yang Liping. It also emerged this
week that the Chinese military hacked into the US Defence Secretary’s
computer system in June; have regularly penetrated computers in at least 10
Whitehall departments, including military files, and infiltrated German
government systems this year.

Cyber attacks by China have become so frequent and aggressive that President
Bush, without referring directly to Beijing, said this week that “a lot of
our systems are vulnerable to attack”. He indicated that he would raise the
subject with Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, when they met in Sydney at
the Apec summit. Mr Hu denied that China was responsible for the attack on
Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary.

Larry M. Wortzel, the author of the US Army War College report, said: “The
thing that should give us pause is that in many Chinese military manuals
they identify the US as the country they are most likely to go to war with.
They are moving very rapidly to master this new form of warfare.” The two
PLA hackers produced a “virtual guidebook for electronic warfare and
jamming” after studying dozens of US and Nato manuals on military tactics,
according to the document.

The Pentagon logged more than 79,000 attempted intrusions in 2005. About 1,300
were successful, including the penetration of computers linked to the Army’s
101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the 4th Infantry Division. In August
and September of that year Chinese hackers penetrated US State Department
computers in several parts of the world. Hundreds of computers had to be
replaced or taken offline for months. Chinese hackers also disrupted the US
Naval War College’s network in November, forcing the college to shut down
its computer systems for several weeks. The Pentagon uses more than 5
million computers on 100,000 networks in 65 countries.

Jim Melnick, a recently retired Pentagon computer network analyst, told The
Times that the Chinese military holds hacking competitions to identify and
recruit talented members for its cyber army.

He described a competition held two years ago in Sichuan province, southwest
China. The winner now uses a cyber nom de guerre, Wicked Rose. He went on
to set up a hacking business that penetrated computers at a defence
contractor for US aerospace. Mr Melnick said that the PLA probably
outsourced its hacking efforts to such individuals. “These guys are very
good,” he said. “We don’t know for sure that Wicked Rose and people like him
work for the PLA. But it seems logical. And it also allows the Chinese
leadership to have plausible deniability.”

In February a massive cyber attack on Estonia by Russian hackers demonstrated
how potentially catastrophic a preemptive strike could be on a developed
nation. Pro-Russian hackers attacked numerous sites to protest against the
controversial removal in Estonia of a Russian memorial to victims of the
Second World War. The attacks brought down government websites, a major bank
and telephone networks.

Linton Wells, the chief computer networks official at the Pentagon, said that
the Estonia attacks “may well turn out to be a watershed in terms of
widespread awareness of the vulnerability of modern society”.

After the attacks, computer security experts from Nato, the EU, US and Israel
arrived in the capital, Tallinn, to study its effects.

Sami Saydjari, who has been working on cyber defence systems for the Pentagon
since the 1980s, told Congress in testimony on April 25 that a mass cyber
attack could leave 70 per cent of the US without electrical power for six
months.

He told The Times that all major nations – including China – were scrambling
to defend against, and working out ways to cause, “maximum strategic damage”
by taking out banking systems, power grids and communications networks. He
said that there were at least a thousand attempted attacks every hour on
American computers. “China is aggressive in this,” he said.

Programmed to attack

Malware: a “Trojan horse” programme, which hides a “malicious code”
behind an innocent document, can collect usernames and passwords for e-mail
accounts. It can download programmes and relay attacks against other
computers. An infected computer can be controlled by the attacker and
directed to carry out functions normally available only to the system owner.

Hacking: increasingly a method of attack used by countries determined
to use electronic means to gain access to secrets. Government computers in
Britain have a network intrusion detection system, which monitors traffic
and alerts officials to “misuse or anomalous behaviour”.

Botnets: compromised networks that an attacker can exploit. Deliberate
programming errors in software can easily pass undetected. Attackers can
exploit the errors to take control of a computer. Botnets can be used for
stealing information or to collect credit card numbers by “sniffing” or
logging the strokes of a victim’s keyboard.

Keystroke loggers: they record the sequence of key strokes that a user
types in. Logging devices can be fitted inside the computer itself.

Denial of service attacks: overloading a computer system so that it can
no longer function. This is the method allegedly used by the Russians to
disrupt the Estonian government computers in May.

Phishing and spoofing: designed to trick an organisation’s customers
into imparting confidential information such as passwords, personal data or
banking details. Those using this method impersonate a “trusted source” such
as a bank or IT helpdesk to persuade the victim to hand over confidential
information. (Michael Evans)

September 8, 2007 at 12:33 PM in China | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The ambiguous arsenal

The ambiguous arsenal | thebulletin.org

By Jeffrey Lewis
May/June 2005 pp. 52-59 (vol. 61, no. 03) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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If you read the Washington Times, in addition to believing that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are hidden somewhere in Syria, you might believe that "China's aggressive strategic nuclear-modernization program" was proceeding apace. [1] If munching on freedom fries at a Heritage Foundation luncheon is your thing, you might worry that "even marginal improvements to [China's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)] derived from U.S. technical know-how" threaten the United States. [2]

So, it may come as a shock to learn that China's nuclear arsenal is about the same size it was a decade ago, and that the missile that prompted the Washington Times article has been under development since the mid-1980s. Perhaps your anxiety about "marginal improvements" to China's missile force would recede as you learned that China's 18 ICBMs, sitting unfueled in their silos, their nuclear warheads in storage, are essentially the same as they were the day China began deploying them in 1981. In fact, contrary to reports you might have recently read that Chinese nukes number in the hundreds--if not the thousands--the true size of the country's operationally deployed arsenal is probably about 80 nuclear weapons.

Estimating the size, configuration, and capability of China's nuclear weapons inventory is not just an exercise in abstract accounting. The specter of a robust Chinese arsenal has been cited by the Bush administration as a rationale for not making deeper cuts in U.S. nuclear deployments. Likewise, opponents of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) point to China in making the case for maintaining U.S. deterrent capabilities. Others portray China's modernization program as evidence of the country's increasingly hostile posture toward Taiwan--adding a sense of urgency to developing missile defenses. And, more recently, these concerns have raised the temperature in transatlantic relations as the European Union contemplates lifting the arms embargo imposed on China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The true scope of China's nuclear capabilities are hidden in plain sight, among the myriad declassified assessments produced by the U.S. intelligence community. Yet, such analyses have run afoul of conservative legislators, who express dismay when threat assessments don't conform to their perceptions of reality. Congressional Republicans, for instance, in 2000 created the China Futures Panel, chaired by former Gen. John Tilelli, to examine charges of bias in the CIA assessments of China. In 2002, Bob Schaffer, a Republican congressman from Colorado, complained about the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of foreign ballistic missile development in a letter to CIA director George Tenet: "The lack of attention to the pronounced and growing danger caused by China's ballistic missile buildup, and its aggressive strategy for using its ballistic missiles cannot go unchallenged. The report is misleading, and, because it understates the magnitude of threat, is profoundly dangerous."

Consequently, many defense analysts simply ignore what the intelligence community has to say. For example, two scholars in a peer-reviewed international security journal cited Jane's Strategic Weapon Systems to suggest that China's future submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM)--the Giant Wave, or Julang-2 (JL-2)--may carry "three to eight multiple independent reentry vehicles." They failed to mention the consensus judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that Chinese warheads are so large that it is impossible to place more than one on the JL-2.

In another instance, a student from the National University of Singapore posted an essay on a web site claiming that China had more than 2,000 warheads. His figure was based on amateurish fissile material production estimates that incorrectly identified several Chinese fissile material facilities. [3] (Classified estimates by the Energy Department, leaked to the press, estimate the Chinese plutonium stockpile at 1.7-2.8 tons. [4] Assuming 3-4 kilograms of plutonium per warhead, China could deploy, at most, a nuclear force of 400-900 weapons.) Despite such obvious mistakes, experts from the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies all cited the Singapore essay to suggest that China might have substantially more nuclear warheads than widely believed. [5] David Tanks, then with the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, called the essay "convincingly argued."

Iraq debacle or not, the estimates of the U.S. intelligence community are still a better place to start than, say, some college kid's essay posted on the internet. These analysts have unparalleled access to the full array of information-gathering technology available to the federal government. For example, the intelligence community monitors ballistic missile tests with satellite images to detect test preparations, signals intelligence sensors to intercept telemetry data, and radars to track missile launches and collect signature data on warheads and decoys. No comparable unclassified source of such data exists, unless it is released by the government conducting the test.

Moreover, the intelligence community employs well-known methods that can be evaluated for gaps or bias. Although intelligence estimates are sometimes politicized or agenda driven, systematic bias is often evident and can be observed by comparing estimates over time. For example, the intelligence community has tended to exaggerate future Chinese ballistic missile deployments, in part because Chinese industrial capacity has tended to exceed production. This information is useful when considering estimates about future Chinese deployments. Establishing a baseline consensus estimate about the size and composition of Chinese nuclear forces would allow analysts to lodge specific objections to intelligence community judgments. More broadly, a deeper understanding of the true scope of China's arsenal and its modernization efforts provides a clearer picture of Beijing's strategic intentions.

Minimum means of reprisal

Beijing doesn't publish detailed information about the size and composition of its nuclear forces. With a very small nuclear arsenal relative to the United States and Russia, China seems intent on letting ambiguity enhance the deterrent effect of its nuclear forces. Chinese force deployments suggest that Beijing's leadership believes that even a very small, unsophisticated force will deter nuclear attacks by larger, more sophisticated nuclear forces. While some Western analysts spent the Cold War fretting about the "delicate balance of terror," the Chinese leadership appears to have concluded that technical details such as the size, configuration, and readiness of nuclear forces are largely irrelevant. China's declaration that it would "not be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances" reflects the idea that nuclear weapons are not much good, except to deter other nuclear weapons. In deciding what sort of nuclear arsenal to build, China settled on what Marshal Nie Rongzhen, the first head of China's nuclear weapons program, called "the minimum means of reprisal." [6]

China's reluctance to provide numerical information about its nuclear forces relaxed a bit this past spring, when its foreign ministry released an April 2004 statement that, "Among the nuclear weapon states, China . . . possesses the smallest nuclear arsenal." That statement suggests China possesses fewer than 200 nuclear weapons, the generally accepted size of the British nuclear arsenal.

The intelligence community does not publish a single, detailed assessment of China's nuclear arsenal. Instead, these estimates are scattered across multiple documents, including the 2001 edition of the Defense Department's Proliferation: Threat and Response and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center's (NASIC) 2003 Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat. Some information, such as the National Intelligence Council's Tracking the Dragon series, has been released through the natural process of declassification. But much more information was released--or leaked--during the 1990s amid debates over allegations of Chinese nuclear espionage, ballistic missile defenses, and the CTBT.

Based upon these various assessments, a realistic estimate of China's nuclear arsenal is a total force of 30 nuclear warheads operationally deployed on ICBMs and another 50-100 on medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), for a total force of 80-130 nuclear weapons. (See "China's Arsenal, by the Numbers,")

Estimates provided by many nongovernmental organizations--such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)--are much higher (albeit, not as high as their more zealous conservative counterparts). They typically describe the People's Republic of China as the world's third largest nuclear power, ahead of Britain and France, with 400 or so warheads. [7] Such estimates often assume deployment of three other categories of nuclear weapons--aircraft-delivered weapons, SLBMs, and tactical nuclear weapons.

Yet, in the 1980s, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found no evidence that China had deployed nuclear bombs to airfields and, based on the antiquity of the aircraft, concluded that China did not assign nuclear missions to any of its planes--a conclusion reiterated in a declassified 1993 National Security Council report. The most recent edition of the Pentagon's Chinese Military Power suggests that China has yet to deploy the Julang-1 (JL-1) ballistic missile on its solitary ballistic missile submarine. And, in 1984, the DIA acknowledged that it had "no evidence confirming production or deployment" of tactical nuclear weapons. To the contrary, Chinese Military Power notes that the country's short-range ballistic missiles are conventionally armed, thereby freeing Beijing from "the political and practical constraints associated with the use of nuclear-armed missiles."

Room for expansion?

Over the next 15 years, the intelligence community expects China's ICBM force to expand from 18 to 75-100 strategic nuclear warheads targeted primarily against the United States and from 12 shorter-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching parts of the United States to "two dozen." [8]

Beijing's modernization plan centers on a mobile, solid-fueled ballistic missile under development since the mid-1980s called the Dong Feng (DF)-31. The intelligence community believes the DF-31 could be deployed during the next few years. Since 2002, IISS has cited "reports" that the DF-31 is deployed, but that assessment appears based on a pair of 2001 news stories in the Taipei Times and Washington Times, neither of which actually claims the missile is deployed. [9]

The intelligence community believes China is also developing follow-on versions of the DF-31: the extended-range DF-31A to replace the DF-5 (currently its longest-range ICBM) and a submarine-launched version (JL-2). The DF-31A may have a range of 12,000 kilometers and could be deployed before 2010. China is also designing a new nuclear ballistic missile submarine to carry the JL-2, which is expected to have a range of more than 8,000 kilometers. China will likely develop and test the JL-2 and the new sub (Type 094) later this decade. [10]

One senior intelligence official described the 75-100 warhead estimate to the New York Times: "[China would] add new warheads to their old 18 [DF-5s], transforming them from single-warhead missiles into four-warhead missiles," or "double the size of their projected land-based mobile missiles." [11] The estimate of 75 warheads assumes that China will supplement its existing ballistic missile force with the DF-31 ICBMs; the estimate of 100 warheads is based on the assumption that China would build half as many DF-31 ballistic missiles, but place multiple warheads on existing DF-5 ICBMs.

China has not placed multiple warheads on its silo-based ICBMs and has not begun to deploy the DF-31. Therefore, these predictions are little more than informed speculation, based on how the intelligence community imagines China might respond to missile defense and other changes in U.S. nuclear posture. Past intelligence community estimates, however, have overstated future Chinese ICBM deployments. The number of Chinese strategic ballistic missiles has actually declined, from 145 in 1984 to 80 today.

China tested its smallest nuclear warhead from 1992-1996. [12] Developed for China's DF-31 ICBM, NASIC estimated that the reentry vehicle has a mass of 470 kilograms--too heavy to place more than one on any of China's solid-fueled ballistic missiles. [13] Placing multiple warheads on China's solid-fueled ballistic missiles would probably require Beijing to design and test a new warhead, which is currently prohibited by China's signature on the CTBT. [14]

Dangerous incentives

So, let's review: China deploys just 30 ICBMs, kept unfueled and without warheads, and another 50-100 MRBMs, sitting unarmed in their garrisons. Conventional wisdom suggests this posture is vulnerable and invites preemptive attack during a crisis. This minimal arsenal is clearly a matter of choice: China stopped fissile material production in 1990 and has long had the capacity to produce a much larger number of ballistic missiles. [15] The simplest explanation for this choice is that the Chinese leadership worries less about its vulnerability to a disarming first strike than the costs of an arms race or what some Second Artillery officer might do with a fully armed nuclear weapon. In a strange way, Beijing placed more faith in Washington and Moscow than in its own military officers.

Washington has never reciprocated that trust. Instead, the United States has embarked on a major transformation of its strategic forces that is, in part, driven by concern about the modernization of China's strategic forces. President Bill Clinton reportedly directed U.S. Strategic Command in 1998 to include plans for strikes against China in the U.S. nuclear weapons targeting plan. The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) identified China as one of seven countries "that could be involved in an immediate or potential contingency" with nuclear weapons. [16]

Chinese strategic forces are increasingly supplanting Russia as the primary benchmark for determining the size and capabilities of U.S. strategic forces--at least in administration rhetoric. China's nuclear arsenal is reflected in the 2001 NPR in two ways. First, the review recommends reducing the 6,000 deployed U.S. nuclear weapons to no less than 1,700-2,200. In response to criticism that these cuts didn't go low enough, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that further reductions might encourage China to attempt what he termed a "sprint to parity"--a rapid increase in nuclear forces to reach numerical parity with the United States. [17]

Second, the 2001 NPR recommends the addition of ballistic missile defenses and non-nuclear strike capabilities to help improve the ability of the United States to extend nuclear deterrence to its allies. [18] Here too, concern over China's arsenal lurked in the background. Shortly before he was nominated as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Policy (with responsibility for overseeing the NPR), Keith Payne argued that the United States, in a crisis with China over Taiwan, must possess the capability to disarm China with a first strike if U.S. deterrence is to be credible. Despite overwhelming U.S. nuclear superiority, he has argued, "China's leadership may not be susceptible to U.S. deterrence threats, regardless of their severity, largely because denying Taiwan independence would be a near-absolute goal for Chinese leaders." Thus, the United States "would have to make blatantly clear its will and capability to defeat Chinese conventional and [weapons of mass destruction] attacks against Taiwan and against its own power projection forces." [19]

Yet, if the United States were truly interested in discouraging a Chinese sprint to parity or the development of a Chinese ballistic missile force that could undertake coercive operations, the president would disavow the vision for nuclear forces outlined in the NPR. The Chinese leadership chose their arsenal in part on the belief that the United States would not be foolish enough to use nuclear weapons against China in a conflict. By asserting that Washington may be that foolish, and by attempting to exploit the weaknesses inherent in China's decision to rely on a small vulnerable force, the NPR creates incentives for Beijing to increase the size, readiness, and usability of its nuclear forces.

Larger, more ready Chinese nuclear forces would not be in the best interests of the United States. In the midst of a crisis, any attempt by Beijing to ready its ballistic missiles for a first strike against the United States, let alone to actually fire one, would be suicide. The only risk that China's current nuclear arsenal poses to the United States is an unauthorized nuclear launch--something the intelligence community has concluded "is highly unlikely" under China's current operational practices. That might change, however, if China were to adopt the "hair trigger" nuclear postures that the United States and Russia maintain even today to demonstrate the "credibility" of their nuclear deterrents. China might also increase its strategic forces or deploy theater nuclear forces that could be used early in a conflict--developments that might alarm India, with predictable secondary effects on Pakistan.

So far, none of this has happened. Chinese nuclear forces today look remarkably like they have for decades. The picture of the Chinese nuclear arsenal that emerges from U.S. intelligence assessments suggests a country that--at least in the nuclear field--is deploying a smaller, less ready arsenal than is within its capabilities. That reflects a choice to rely on a minimum deterrent that sacrifices offensive capability in exchange for maximizing political control and minimizing economic cost--a decision that seems eminently sensible. The great mystery is not that Beijing chose such an arsenal, but that the Bush administration would be eager to change it.

1. Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, "Inside the Ring: Failed DF-31 Test," Washington Times, January 4, 2002, p. 9.

2. Richard D. Fisher Jr., "Commercial Space Cooperation Should Not Harm National Security," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 1198, June 26, 1998.

3. Yang Zheng, China's Nuclear Arsenal, March 16, 1996 (www.kimsoft.com/korea/ch-war.htm).

4. David Wright and Lisbeth Gronlund, "A History of China's Plutonium Production," pp. 61-80; see also David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 126-130.

5. See: Fisher, "Commercial Space Cooperation Should Not Harm National Security"; Richard D. Fisher Jr. and Baker Spring, "China's Nuclear and Missile Espionage Heightens the Need for Missile Defense," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 1303, July 2, 1999; David R. Markov and Andrew W. Hull, "The Changing Nature of Chinese Nuclear Strategy," Institute for Defense Analyses, January 1997; David R. Tanks, "Exploring U.S. Missile Defense Requirements in 2010: What Are the Policy and Technology Challenges?" Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, April 1997; and "Size of China's Ballistic Missile Force," Centre for Defence and International Security Studies, no author, no date.

6. Nie Rongzhen, Inside the Red Star: The Memoirs of Marshal Nie Rongzhen, Zhong Rongyi, translator (Beijing: New World Press, 1988). See also: Nie Rongzhen, "How China Develops Its Nuclear Weapons," Beijing Review, April 29, 1985, pp. 15-18.

7. Such estimates are often based on two comments in the open literature: In 1979, a senior Defense Department official described the nuclear forces deployed by China, France, and Britain as "more or less comparable with China perhaps being the leader of the three. So it is possible that China might be the third nuclear power in the world." See: Defense Department, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for FY80; Part 1: Defense Posture; Budget Priorities and Management Issues; Strategic Nuclear Posture (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office (GPO), 1979), p. 357. See also John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 253. A "senior Chinese military officer" purportedly told Lewis and Xue that China maintained "a nuclear weapons inventory greater than that of the French and British strategic forces combined."

8. Unless otherwise noted, this estimate is derived from: Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, CIA National Intelligence Estimate of Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat through 2015, Senate Hearing 107-467, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002.

9. Bill Gertz, "China Ready to Deploy its First Mobile ICBMs," Washington Times, September 6, 2001.

10. Senate Committee on Intelligence, Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States, Senate Hearing 107-597, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2001, p. 79.

11. Michael R. Gordon and Steven Lee Myers, "Risk of Arms Race Seen in U.S. Design of Missile Defense," New York Times, May 28, 2000, p. A1. An earlier National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC) estimate, however, suggested that the DF-5A (CSS-4) might carry up to three 470-kilogram DF-31 (CSS-X-10)-type reentry vehicles--although one assumption of this analysis was that a "minimum number of changes" were made to modify a Smart Dispenser upper stage for use as a post-boost vehicle. See Bill Gertz, Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1999), p. 252.

12. Defense Department, Future Military Capabilities of the People's Republic of China, Report to Congress Pursuant to Section 1226 of the FY98 National Defense Authorization Act (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1998), p. 5.

13. The NAIC estimate is found in NAIC-1442-0629-97 (no title), December 10, 1996, cited in Gertz, Betrayal, pp. 251-252.

14. John M. Shalikashvili, Findings and Recommendations Concerning the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2001).

15. Defense Department, Chinese Military Power 1997, p. 4.

16. Presidential Decision Directive (PDD)-60 (1998) returned China to the Single Integrated Operational Plan after a reported 16-year absence. Although classified, the Washington Post reported that PDD-60 directed "the military to plan attacks against a wider spectrum of targets in China, including the country's growing military-industrial complex and its improved conventional forces." See: R. Jeffrey Smith, "Clinton Directive Changes Strategy on Nuclear Arms Centering on Deterrence, Officials Drop Terms for Long Atomic War," Washington Post, December 7, 1997, p. A1; and Hans M. Kristensen, The Matrix of Deterrence: U.S. Strategic Command Force Structure Studies (Berkeley: Nautilus Institute, 2001), pp. 14-15. The revelation produced a confidential State Department memorandum, now partially declassified, concerning targeting policy. See: State Department, Targeting Policy, March 17, 1998 (SEA-23820.9).

17. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reduction: The Moscow Treaty, Senate Hearing 107-622, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002, pp. 81, 111.

18. These quotations are drawn from the unclassified cover letter that accompanied the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. See: Donald H. Rumsfeld, Foreword, Nuclear Posture Review Report, January 2002 (www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2002/d20020109npr.pdf).

19. Keith B. Payne, "Post-Cold War Deterrence and a Taiwan Crisis," China Brief, vol. 1, no. 5, September 12, 2001.

Back to top ^

Jeffrey Lewis is a research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy in College Park, Maryland.

May/June 2005 pp. 52-59 (vol. 61, no. 03) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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Sidebar: China's arsenal, by the numbers

Why 80-130 operationally deployed weapons is the best estimate for China's nuclear forces

• 18 DF-5 (NATO designation: CSS-4) ICBMs. The liquid-fueled Dong Feng (DF)-5 ICBM ("East Wind") is the only Chinese missile capable of striking targets throughout the entire United States. With the greatest throw weight among Chinese ballistic missiles, the DF-5 is likely equipped with China's largest nuclear warhead, with an estimated yield of 4-5 megatons. The National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) estimates that China has "about 20" DF-5s. [1] In congressional testimony, Gen. Eugene Habiger, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, was more specific, revealing that China had 18 DF-5s, all of which are silo-based. [2]

• 12 DF-4 (CSS-3) ICBMs. Although NASIC lists the DF-4 as an ICBM, the DF-4 is not capable of reaching the continental United States. In 1993, the U.S. intelligence community estimated that of China's approximately ten DF-4 ICBMs, "two of the DF-4s are based in silos but most are stored in caves and must be rolled out to adjacent launch pads for firing." [3] The DF-4 reportedly is loaded with the same 2,000-kilogram, 3-megaton reentry vehicle as the DF-3. [4] NASIC estimates that China has "fewer than 25" DF-4 ICBMs. [5] The most recent National Intelligence Estimate on ballistic missile threats is more specific, stating that China maintains "about a dozen [DF-4] ICBMs that are almost certainly intended as a retaliatory deterrent against targets in Russia and Asia." [6]

• 50-100 DF-3 (CSS-2) and DF-21 (CSS-5) medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs). China's nuclear-capable "theater" ballistic missile force comprises DF-3 and DF-21 ballistic missiles. The DF-3 is a land-based derivative of the naval Julang-1 (CSS-NX-3). China is upgrading the DF-21 to replace the much older DF-3 and converting an unspecified number of DF-21 ballistic missiles to conduct conventional missions. During normal peacetime operations, DF-3 and DF-21 launchers probably remain in their garrisons, where the principle method of protecting deployments is extensive tunneling. [7]

In 1972, U.S. intelligence assessed that the DF-3 was equipped with China's earliest 3-megaton thermonuclear warhead. [8] Unofficial reports indicate that China planned a 600-kilogram warhead for the DF-21 with a yield of 400 or more kilotons, although the delayed deployment of the DF-21 in the late 1990s may have allowed China to use DF-31 type warheads tested between 1992 and 1996. [9] Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat estimates the number of launchers for the DF-3, DF-21 "Mod 1" and DF-21 "Mod 2" MRBMs as "less than fifty" each, implying as many as 150 total MRBM launchers. [10] Intelligence documents leaked to the press, however, suggest that there are fewer than 50 total MRBM launchers of all types. [11] The entire MRBM force (DF-3 and DF-21), then, comprises either 50 or 100 missiles, depending on whether 1 or 2 missiles are assigned to each launcher.

Jeffrey Lewis

1. National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, August 2003, p. 16.

2. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Ballistic Missiles: Threat and Response, Senate Hearings 106-339, 106th Cong., 2nd sess., 1999, p. 165. See also: Defense Department, Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China ("Chinese Military Power"), June 2000. Chinese Military Power notes that "China reportedly has built 18 CSS-4 [DF-5] silos."

3. National Security Council, Report to Congress on Status of China, India and Pakistan Nuclear and Ballistic Missile Programs, 1993 (www.fas.org/irp/threat/930728-wmd.htm).

4. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Soviet and People's Republic of China Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy, March 1972, (page number redacted). See tables 5 and 6.

5. NASIC, Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, p. 16.

6. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, CIA National Intelligence Estimate of Foreign Missile Developments, Senate Hearing 107-467, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 2002, p. 32.

7. On peacetime DF-3 (CSS-2) operations, including tunneling efforts, see: DIA, Intelligence Appraisal China: Nuclear Missile Strategy, March 1981, pp. 4-5 (DIAIAPPR 34-81).

8. DIA, Soviet and People's Republic of China Nuclear Weapons Employment Strategy.

9. John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, China's Strategic Seapower: The Politics of Force Modernization in the Nuclear Age, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 177.

10. NASIC, Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, p. 10.

11. A 1996 National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC) report on the program to replace the DF-3 (CSS-2) with the DF-21 (CSS-5) suggested that China had approximately 40 DF-3 launchers and implied that the DF-21 was replacing the DF-3 on a one-to-one basis. NAIC, China Incrementally Downsizing CSS-2 IRBM Force, November 1996 (NAIC-1030-098B-96), cited in Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2000), pp. 233-34.

February 15, 2006 at 12:17 PM in China | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Chinese investments around the world

Asia, Far East, news and analysis Times Online, The Times, Sunday Times

Graphic: Chinese investments

January 11, 2006 at 07:42 PM in China | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Last of the Gang of Four dies after thirty years in disgrace

Asia, Far East, news and analysis Times Online, The Times, Sunday Times

From Clifford Coonan in Beijing and Jane Macartney

YAO WENYUAN, the expert propagandist who laid the ideological foundations for China’s Cultural Revolution, has died in Shanghai aged 74. He was the last surviving member of the Gang of Four.

A two-line statement by the official Xinhua news agency described Mr Yao as a “key criminal of the counter-revolutionary group” and said that he had died of diabetes on December 23.

The brevity of the announcement and the delay in making it betray the political sensitivity that still surrounds the decade of turmoil from 1966 to 1976. Any mention of it risks tarnishing the image of the group’s close ally and patron, Chairman Mao, who is still officially revered, and the credibility of the ruling Communist Party.

The Gang of Four was led by Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s wife, a former stage and film actress. As well as Mr Yao, it included the politically astute ideologue Zhang Chunqiao and the worker-turned-militia-leader Wang Hongwen.

The four, with Mao, were the main players in the Cultural Revolution, whipping up an ultra-leftist frenzy, purging tens of thousands of supposed enemies and destroying the lives of millions. The party is still reluctant to allow scrutiny of the events.

A generation of children was deprived of a proper education while their parents, with their careers shattered, were sent to toil in the countryside. China’s intellectuals have never recovered the respect they had commanded for centuries.

The Communist Party now refers obliquely to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as the “decade of chaos”. Its regular warnings against a new outburst of leftist fervour reveal official anxieties that another such ideological tilt too far could result in a similar power struggle and purge.

China has been changed beyond recognition by the capitalist methods so derided by Mr Yao. But the Communist Party is more determined than ever to maintain its grip on power, insisting on its right to rule as part of the legacy of Chairman Mao.

Mao, seen as the founder of modern China, remains a potent Communist symbol. His huge portrait still hangs above Tiananmen Square, President Hu Jintao praised Maoist principles in a new year’s speech and the Government plans to spend millions on a new museum in Mao’s home town.

Unsurprisingly, the party is eager to play down his association with Mr Yao.

In November 1965, Mr Yao was editor of the Shanghai edition of the Liberation Army Daily and fired the opening shots in the Cultural Revolution with an essay, written at Jiang Qing’s instigation, criticising a play written four years earlier. It was a thinly veiled attack on her husband’s high-level rivals — “backstage abetters”, as they became known.

As chief propagandist of the Cultural Revolution, Mr Yao orchestrated armies of young, extremist “Red Guards” who wreaked havoc across China as they hunted down those deemed by the Gang of Four — and by Mao — to be “capitalist roaders” and “bourgeois running dogs”. Children were encouraged to inform on their parents and intellectuals were harassed, beaten and imprisoned.

One government magazine said of Mr Yao in 1981: “His weapon to kill people was the pen.”

Within weeks of Chairman Mao’s death in 1976, the four were arrested in a bloodless coup. Mr Yao was sentenced to 18 years for his propagandist role in the Cultural Revolution and the other three were jailed for life for causing the deaths of tens of thousands of their countrymen.

Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao’s fourth wife, never repented and hanged herself in 1991. Wang Hongwen died of liver cancer in Beijing in 1992, and Zhang Chunqiao died of cancer in April last year.

Mr Yao began his career in Shanghai as a literary critic and journalist. In April 1969 he rose to membership of the party’s elite Central Committee and was given the hugely powerful job of propaganda chief.

After completing his sentence in 1996, he was sent back to his home village near Shanghai to live under house arrest. He spent his time writing and studying Chinese history. He always said that his most fervent desire was to be reinstated by the Communist Party.

The publication of his memoirs was vetoed in 2001 by Jian Zemin, then the Communist Party chief.

January 7, 2006 at 11:34 AM in China | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

On becoming a Chinese Colony

On becoming a Chinese Colony - Sokwanele

Sokwanele Special Report : 21 June 2005

Spontaneous protest, Bulawayo, 19 June 2005"We are a sovereign nation! We will never be a colony again!" This slogan drove ZANU PF's 2005 election campaign; and it was followed by a frenzied attack on Tony Blair and his treasonous accomplices of imperialism within Zimbabwe. The thousands of school children forced to listen to such rantings have never experienced being a colony and surely do not understand the concept of sovereignty. But it becomes increasingly apparent that few of those who shout from the rooftops about our much vaunted sovereignty understand it either. They do not understand that sovereignty in today's globalised community holds little meaning for many nations, and even less for a country with a collapsed economy. But even worse, as they boast disingenuously of Zimbabwe's sovereignty, they are busy selling what little remains of it to a different coloniser - the Chinese.

In the 1960's, when our push for independence with majority rule began in earnest, we knew what a colony meant, and thought we knew what sovereignty meant. A colony was a country ruled not by its own people, but by others. Sovereignty meant being in charge of our own fate, our own government, our own natural resources, and our own decisions about our present and future development. If we threw off our foreign rulers then we would be sovereign in our own land. There were two problems with this, we discovered. One was that in order to gain that "independence" we had to make compromises, particularly in regard to what we could do with private ownership of land. Secondly, although we might be politically independent, economically we could not progress without assistance from foreigners in the form of loans and investment.

Throughout the first twenty years of "Independence", ZANU PF pursued an essentially western-oriented, capitalist approach to the economy. In spite of socialist rhetoric and tight economic controls, socialism was in no way a serious prospect. When the economy ran into trouble at the end of the 1980's, because we could not pay our debts, we had to depend on balance of payments support from the IMF; being indebted meant we had to take instructions from the lenders on how to organise our economy, and this entangled us deeper in the tentacles of world capitalism. Indeed, we were no longer a colony, but we were hardly sovereign in our land because we could not choose our own policies. Too late ZANU PF realised the danger. By the end of the 1990's with the economy contracting under structural adjustment, ZANU's political support crumbled. They decided to renew efforts to use land redistribution to pacify supporters and reinvigorate the economy. But land reform still required foreign assistance and they were frustrated by conditions placed by donors who distrusted their corrupt, opaque and nepotistic methods. It is a fact of economic life that the financier dictates the terms; but while in 1980 and 1990 ZANU PF had been prepared to work within the conditions, in 2000 they could see that the impositions would affect their ability to rule by patronage. Instead they staged a governmental temper tantrum, denounced the west, and returned to the anti-imperialist rhetoric of the liberation struggle.

In the name of sovereignty, of not accepting dictates from anyone, they accused the west of interfering in their internal affairs. And then rationality flew away in the wind and they took the breathtaking step of destroying the whole of the economy. Did they believe that it could be rebuilt from scratch and genuine independence would result? Had they no understanding of the painstaking work based on experience, skill, time and financial resources required to develop a complex economy such as was Zimbabwe's? Free from external dictates of western governments they may now be, but it is time to realise that economic reality can also dictate and curtail sovereignty.

When the economic dislocation began to produce serious shortages, it became clear that ZANU PF could not "go it alone"; they had no alternative but to look for other friends. Did they believe that the new friends would not place conditions on them, would respect their "sovereignty"? The first choice was Libya, because at least it could produce badly needed fuel, and it was known to be anti-western; but Libya was not enough of a friend to give away fuel that could not be paid for, and was just then busy compromising its own "sovereignty" to gain acceptability in the western world. Malaysia was initially sympathetic but had a change of leadership, which diverted its interest in assisting ZANU PF. Then they had to look for the player of last resort - the Chinese.

It was not the first time that ZANU PF had turned to China when it had no other friends. In the early 1960's, when the nationalists decided to demand full independence, they first thought that they could achieve it simply by negotiating with the British government. They were not socialists and were not revolutionaries; they were nationalists, wanting a liberal form of democracy on the British model. But the British could not or would not deliver. The decision to embrace armed struggle drove both ZAPU and ZANU to the "East". ZAPU, on the scene earlier, had made contact with the Soviet Union. ZANU was forced to make do with the Chinese version of communism; the split between the Soviet Union and China by the early 60's allowed them space to develop alongside the Soviet-backed ZAPU. ZANU rapidly transformed themselves into socialists and developed a new rhetoric to fit the need for support from China. They sacrificed the freedom to develop their own political line in order to get training, logistics, and political support. And increasingly Chinese ideology seemed to make sense in their struggle to dislodge settler colonialism.

In the 60's, ZANU needed China to assist with the struggle to overthrow colonialism. China needed ZANU to bolster its quarrel with the Soviets for the control of world communism. China was itself becoming a champion of the oppressed and colonised, in competition with the Soviet Union, and African liberation movements provided suitable clients. The split in the Zimbabwean liberation movement was a golden opportunity.

ZANU PF is again in desperate need of a friend. They have clung to power in Zimbabwe in the face of clear and repeated demonstrations that the people do not want them. They have destroyed an already struggling economy in the name of anti-imperialism and sovereignty. They have alienated their friends of the 1980's and the 1990's. What better solution than to turn again to their friend of the 1960's and 70's?

During the Cold War, China pursued interests in independent African countries, providing assistance with projects such as the building of the railway from Zambia to Dar es Salaam after UDI, building roads, selling consumer goods, and distributing thousands of free copies of Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book". Their motive was primarily ideological. Surely they would be able to help ZANU PF again in their hour of need, to combat a common enemy.

But while ZANU is still thinking in the cadences of armed revolutionary struggle against imperialism, the Chinese have moved on. Their once underdeveloped economy is fast transforming into a challenger to the dominant Americans, using capitalist principles of exploitation and profit taking.

China has recreated itself in the past fifteen years. The retention of a communist political system means little more than complete control of the political space by the Communist Party. Economically, they have developed capitalist production, relying to some extent on American, Japanese and European investment, but also on opening up to private Chinese ownership, particularly in the manufacturing sector. Growth of the Chinese economy in the past decade has been phenomenal, and they have reached the stage that European capitalism reached in the 19th century. The Chinese companies need fields for investment where they can raise capital through super-profits, they need raw materials, and they also need markets where they can sell the vast output from thousands of factories that produce cheap consumer goods.

Inside China, economic development has been rapid since the early nineties, but it is within the last five years that it has started to have a major impact on the world economy. It is a magnet for investment from the west, particularly the U.S.; it has seen major population changes from rural to urban centres, huge developments in the energy and electronics sectors and massive growth of manufacturing as its citizens become more able to afford mass-produced consumer goods. And as it has transformed its production from state-owned to privately owned, it has invaded foreign markets with all kinds of goods. Last year it joined the World Trade Organisation.

Quietly, without fanfare, China has been moving into Africa. Africa is the one continent which still has relatively untapped reserves, particularly of fossil fuels and minerals. Her main targets have been Sudan, Nigeria, and Angola. China needs oil, and has been getting it. She has been developing oilfields in Sudan and now Sudan supplies 5% of her oil consumption. Nigeria not only has oil, but also provides a huge market in a country where manufacturing is not well developed. But there is no African country where China would not like to sell her manufactured goods, particularly clothing, shoes, hardware, electronic goods - in fact almost anything, including as we have seen, airplanes. In just three years, from 2001 to 2004, China's trade with Africa has more than doubled from $US10 billion to $US 20 billion.

What could China want in Zimbabwe? We do not have oil, our population is small compared to those of larger African countries. Our location is not particularly strategic for an outsider. What the Chinese want is raw materials and opportunities for investment. They will be happy to have a share in mines, power production, anything that can turn them a profit for a comparatively small amount of investment. These are wanted not so much by the Chinese government, but by individual companies. They also need an outlet for the substandard manufactured goods that cannot be sold in the developed world, where they sell their quality products. The Chinese government is interested in their companies' progress, and assists them through such bodies as the China-Africa Co-operation Forum.

For China, Zimbabwe is economic small fry, but for ZANU PF, China is the only way out of a deep hole. ZANU PF needs what it has thrown away from the rest of the world - investment to get the economy going again, investment to cover the foreign currency gap, the energy gap, the food gap, and the agricultural production gap. But ZANU PF needs the Chinese for something more sinister as well - perhaps it is only the Chinese who are prepared to assist them to stay in power against the wishes of their own people. The Chinese have ample experience in controlling restive peoples, both their own and those they have colonised, as in Tibet. They have no compunctions about democracy or human rights, only a single minded obsession with control. And since their own people do not enjoy democratic freedom of expression and participation, they have no check on what types of regimes they support elsewhere. ZANU PF has doubtless observed how China has been able to supply the Sudanese government with military equipment used against their own people and at the same time frustrate any United Nations action against Sudan for the atrocities in Darfur.
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The Chinese government also has an interest in political alliances that will promote China's policies world-wide. They want supporting votes in international bodies that will protect them from scrutiny over their human rights abuses, their non-observance of international labour standards, not to mention violations of democratic principles and civil rights. A state such as Zimbabwe can provide that support.

But the Chinese government is also perhaps the only one that succeeded in destroying their own economy while yet remaining in power. They reduced their own economy to ruins during the "Cultural Revolution" of the 1960's and 70's, when they subdued all ideas outside the accepted party line through extreme brutality and deliberate breakdown of society. As communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, they prevented the same from occurring in China by the brute force symbolised by the massacre of hundreds in Tienanmen Square in 1989. They probably understand what ZANU PF are trying to do, and are quite prepared to help them do it.

So where are we at the moment in terms of engagement with the Chinese? Our government is so secretive that it is often difficult to have authenticated information. In terms of investment, we have been told of their interest in Hwange colliery and electricity generation, their interest in farming, and of possible involvement in platinum mining. We know the government is targeting China as a source of tourists; we also know that we have bought three commercial airplanes for the price of two, and we have seen the Chinese busses that are reportedly of poor quality. We have also seen the military aircraft, the brand new army trucks and riot gear, and experienced the effects of jamming of radio broadcasts, said to be done using Chinese equipment.

What we do not know are the terms of engagement. Is it true that we are paying for military equipment and commercial aircraft with our tobacco crop, or with our natural resources? We don't know; nor do we know the prices we are paying. We have already seen the flood of cheap Chinese goods on the market. How do they repatriate their profits? There are stories such as that of the individual Chinese businessman who made enough profit in four years of small trading to build himself a house in Dubai. Are they being favoured in forex deals? We don't know. While we may need the investment in key productive areas, what are we giving in exchange? One thing we do know from our own experience is that the Chinese do not have any concern for labour standards and exploit labour to the fullest. Furthermore, they often do not even provide the jobs we need, preferring to bring their own personnel to work on projects in Africa. And their environmental awareness has been open to question even within China, demonstrating that development takes priority, with environmental impact far down the scale of priorities. If they have no wish to preserve their own environment, why would they care about ours?

Recently we have seen the use of the Chinese jets, the army trucks and riot gear in the war on the urban poor. The use of slogans for campaigns such as "Driving out the Rubbish" are reminiscent of Chinese campaigns during the Cultural Revolution. Is this the beginning of an attempt, with Chinese assistance and protection, to engineer society in a manner beneficial to ZANU PF? It is too early to tell, but it is a frightening thought.

If we follow this policy line, where will we be in three or fours years' time? Of course it all depends on how large the Chinese presence looms, and how much we offer in return. Although we could not describe the relationship between our two countries as classic colonialism, it certainly fits the bill of late twentieth century neo-colonialism - we invest in your economy for our own benefit, extract the natural resources for the development of our own industries, not yours, and sell you the products of our factories. Such investment brings few jobs for Zimbabweans, and little benefit, while the Chinese take their profits. That is the economic side of it. The political side is even more sinister for the Zimbabwean people - we provide you the means to maintain your control over your own people when they resist your policies, and the protection from censure in international bodies.

The Chinese know that our people do not appreciate the relationship, but they will support an oppressive government so that the relationship can continue to their benefit. As long as ZANU PF remains in power they will provide them with military equipment, even airplanes, to suppress the people's aspirations, their right not to be arbitrarily deprived of their property, their civil rights, even their right to make a living in the informal sector. They will assist ZANU PF to gain total control of all information that circulates in the country so that people may remain in ignorance. They even know how to depopulate cities and send "unwanted elements" to the countryside for hard labour. In spite of all the sweet nothings mouthed at diplomatic encounters, China is no longer the champion of African "liberation" or even of African development. Its business deals are purely that - business, and in competition with American business to exploit the opportunities that Africa offers. The political deals serve their own interests first, the ZANU PF elite second, and the Zimbabwean people not at all.

ZANU PF seems to think that the Chinese will rescue them and the economy. It's possible that they will, but not in the name of sovereignty, not in the name of development and certainly not in the name of democratic progress. They will become the new colonisers, dictating the terms of engagement. They may bring a distorted growth while undermining indigenous Zimbabwean development, and depriving us of what little is left of our rights as citizens. China will not be the champion of poor Zimbabweans, the defenders of our nation against the grasping foreigner. China will be the foreigner and ZANU PF the aider and abettor in the sale of our resources and exploitation of our people. Has ZANU PF understood the price of turning to China at this juncture? Or is no price too high to pay for remaining in power?

June 27, 2005 at 08:19 PM in China | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

China Law Authorizes Force Against Taiwan

Yahoo! News - China Law Authorizes Force Against Taiwan

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING - China's parliament enacted a law Monday authorizing force to stop rival Taiwan from pursuing formal independence, sparking outrage on the self-governing island and warnings that the measure would fuel regional tensions.

The ceremonial National People's Congress passed the law despite U.S. appeals for restraint. It came a day after President Hu Jintao called on China's military to be ready for war and followed a 12.6 percent increase in the country's defense budget for 2005.

Premier Wen Jiabao said the mainland still wants to unite peacefully with the island and doesn't want to disrupt the status quo.

"It is not targeted at the people of Taiwan, nor is it a war bill," Wen said at a news conference. But he also warned outsiders not to get involved: "We do not wish to see foreign interference."

A Taiwanese government spokesman rejected the measure as a "serious provocation."

"It also brought emotional pain to the Taiwanese people, restricts Taiwan's freedom and democracy, and has a serious impact on security in the East-Asia region," said Joseph Wu, chairman of the island's Mainland Affairs Council, which handles policy toward Beijing.

In a session broadcast on national television, the Chinese delegates burst into applause after the law was approved by a 2,896 to 0 vote, with two abstentions. The body usually votes overwhelmingly for Communist Party policies, but the emphatic result was meant to send a message of the intensity of Beijing's sentiment on the issue.

Taiwan and China split in 1949. Beijing has threatened repeatedly to attack if it tries to make its de facto independence permanent. The United States is Taiwan's biggest arms supplier and could be drawn into any conflict over the island.

A leading Taiwanese lawmaker criticized the measure as a "savage law."

It shows that China "feels futile and doesn't know how to deal with Taiwan's democracy and freedom," said Chen Chin-jun, a member of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

"We can clearly see that Taiwan and China ... are not one China. They are two Chinas or one country on each side," Chen said in Taipei. "Whatever law they passed, Taiwan has its own sovereignty, government, country and democracy."

The law says China would "employ nonpeaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity." It said such steps could be taken if Taiwan declared formal independence, if "major incidents" occurred causing Taiwan to separate permanently from China, or if "possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted."

The law doesn't give details of what specific developments might trigger an attack. It adds no new threats or conditions, but it codifies the measures for authorizing military action.

Legislators said the law would send a message that Beijing's patience was wearing thin.

"For us in the armed forces, this gives us a legal foundation on which to make our preparations to maintain our sovereignty and territorial integrity," said Lt. Zhang Shantong, a delegate from the People's Liberation Army.

Japan warned that the law could increase regional tensions.

"We are concerned about negative effects of the bill on the peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits and the relationship between the two sides, which had been improving," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda.

Tokyo and Washington issued a joint statement in February listing for the first time the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue as a joint strategic objective.

China has spent heavily in recent years to modernize the PLA, focusing on adding high-tech weapons to extend its reach and back up threats to attack Taiwan.

"We shall step up preparations for possible military struggle and enhance our capabilities to cope with crises, safeguard peace, prevent wars and win the wars if any," Hu said Sunday, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Many Chinese are strongly nationalistic and support unification with Taiwan. But because China allows no opposition politicians or free press, it was difficult to gauge the level of genuine support for the law.

On a Beijing street, a migrant from the poor inland province of Anhui who was selling pirated DVDs showed little interest in the government's statements about Taiwan.

"We're ordinary people," said the man, who would give only his surname, Ye. "We worry about what to eat, what to wear."

March 14, 2005 at 12:24 PM in China | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

China's Big Export

TIME.com Print Page: TIME Magazine -- China's Big Export

When it comes to spying, Beijing likes to flood the zone
By BRIAN BENNETT

Try 4 Issues of TIME magazine FREE!
Ning Wen and his wife were arrested last fall at their home office in Manitowoc, Wis., for allegedly sending their native China $500,000 worth of computer parts that could enhance missile systems. As these naturalized citizens await trial, similar episodes in Mount Pleasant, N.J., and Palo Alto, Calif., point only to the tip of the iceberg, according to FBI officials keeping tabs on more than 3,000 companies in the U.S. suspected of collecting information for China. A hotbed of activity is Silicon Valley, where the number of Chinese espionage cases handled by the bureau increases 20% to 30% annually. Says a senior FBI official: "China is trying to develop a military that can compete with the U.S., and they are willing to steal to get [it]."

But instead of assigning one well-trained agent to pursue a target, "the Chinese are very good at putting a lot of people on just a little piece and getting a massive amount of stuff home," says a U.S. intelligence official. The number of Chinese snoops is staggering, if only because average civilians are enlisted in the effort. FBI officials say state security agents in China debrief many visitors to the U.S. before and after their trips, asking what they saw and sometimes telling them what to get.

The FBI, severely criticized for its investigation of physicist Wen Ho Lee in the mid-'90s, has added hundreds more counterintelligence agents and put at least one in every Energy Department research facility. The bureau also started cooperation initiatives with corporations, but still sees universities as a soft spot, with some 150,000 Chinese currently studying in the U.S. The FBI's three most recent counterintelligence arrests were of suspects who had held student visas at some point. To help sort the few who go to America to spy from the thousands who go there for a better life, the FBI relies heavily on Chinese informants. Says a high-ranking Silicon Valley agent: "We have almost more assets than we can deal with."

With reporting by Timothy J. Burger and Elaine Shannon

Copyright � 2005 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

February 14, 2005 at 09:38 PM in China | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The new 'Red Scare'

TheStar.com - The new 'Red Scare'

There's no other term for it than Red Scare.

Chinese companies, most of them state-controlled, have been kicking the tires of Canadian resource companies since last fall. They haven't bought anything yet — not Noranda Inc., Husky Energy Inc. or any of the other, mostly oilpatch, firms they've given the once-over.

Yet their sniffing around has provoked Ottawa into protectionist mode not seen since the discredited Foreign Investment Review Act of the 1970s and the equally loathed National Energy Program of the early 1980s.

David Emerson, federal energy minister, seemed sanguine at first. Confronted last October with the prospect of a takeover of Toronto-based mining giant Noranda Inc. by China Minmetals Corp., he invoked the need for Sino-Canadian harmony.

"Trade and investment relationships with China are very, very important," he said at the time, signaling Ottawa's reluctance to meddle in private-sector transactions.

All to the good, you would think, in the minds of the laissez faire crowd. But no.

Prominent politicians and right-wing commentators directed a torrent of vitriol against Beijing, assailing not only the regime's civil rights record and bureaucratic corruption but raising questions about its business acumen.

In recent years, Ottawa has been silent as Hong Kong's Victor Li made a play for Air Canada, a Russian entrepreneur stepped into the bidding for Stelco Inc., and a half dozen or so of Calgary's mid-sized oil firms were snapped up by U.S. predators.

But the feds' silence on Communist Chinese encroachment on Canada's resource sector was short-lived, even if the likes of Ralph Klein have been courting the Chinese to bankroll the exorbitant cost of developing Alberta's oil-sands wealth.

The Red Scare rhetoric reached its latest peak last week, when Emerson mused about likely conditions to be imposed on foreign acquirers in legislation that will be enacted this year. Of the Chinese companies' prey, Emerson said last Wednesday, "We would probably want to ensure that these companies were open and transparent and, ideally, continue to be publicly traded."

In the world of mergers and acquisitions, no G-7 government has routinely demanded that acquired companies retain their publicly traded status, a condition that would largely negate the value of many takeover transactions.

What accounts for Emerson's change of heart, backed by supportive noises from Paul Martin? Rhetoric aside, it isn't China's abysmal human-rights record, which hasn't unduly troubled Ottawa or other Western capitals since the Tiananmen Square massacre 16 years ago. In any case, China doesn't rank among Freedom House's latest list of the top 10 most repressive nations, which does include such Western allies as Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan.

What changed since last fall for Emerson, a former CEO of B.C. forestry giant Canfor Corp., is his recognition of the surprising vulnerability of our resource sector to a rash of takeovers.

Among our widely held producers of materials traditionally defined as having strategic national importance are heavyweights like Noranda, Husky, Alcan Inc., EnCana Corp., Petro-Canada, Suncor Energy Inc., Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Talisman Energy Inc., Nexen Inc., Inco Ltd., Barrick Gold Corp., Placer Dome Inc. and Teck Cominco Ltd.

`Ottawa wants some kind of mechanism ... so Canadians don't wake up one morning and ask how they all ended up working for the Chinese government'

Think tank executive

With combined assets of $183 billion, those firms would realistically be an affordable proposition for a resources-starved China with its staggering $483 billion (U.S.) in foreign-exchange reserves.

Emerson is now giving voice to an almost unthinkable prospect � the disappearance of pretty much the entire Canadian resource sector under the jackboot of a Communist regime an ocean away.

"We have to ensure � particularly in the case of non-renewable resources � we're not just willy nilly unloading our natural resources without ensuring full benefits to Canada as a result," Emerson said last Wednesday.

This is one of those rare issues that appears to have united the laissez faire crowd and the anti-globalization agitators.

Jim Stanford, economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, is troubled by a resource sell-off by which "we risk reverting to a developing world economy of hewers of wood and pumpers of oil." Stanford's nightmare is that the Chinese buy our flagship resource firms simply for their riches in the ground, and transfer the processing jobs to low-cost smelters and refineries in China at a cost of tens of thousands of Canadian jobs.

"I've said China is a time bomb for the worshippers of globalization," Stanford adds. Canada may be in the vanguard among G-7 nations in objecting to China's closed markets "by finally putting limits on Chinese imports and attaching conditions to investment flows in Canada."

The growing discomfort in Ottawa over Chinese direct foreign investment may be a harbinger as Beijing encounters resistance in industrial nations that don't boast our traditionally harmonious Sino-Canadian relations.

U.S. congressional leaders are seeking to block IBM Corp.'s proposed sale of its personal computer business to Chinese state-controlled firm Lenovo. "This sale could lead to the Chinese government unfairly taking over the global market for personal computers," Don Manzullo, Illinois congressman, claimed last week.

Given that IBM commands just 5 per cent of the U.S. personal computer market, one can only imagine the U.S. backlash if China bid for a truly important enterprise such as Intel Corp., Newmont Mining Corp. or ExxonMobil Corp.

One must leave such scenarios to the imagination, since they are extraordinarily remote. There is a discernible rise in paranoia about China south of the border, where David Hale's website, Chinaonline.com, monitors creeping Chinese influence around the globe. Hale argues that the British and American empires were founded on resource exploitation, and notes that the Chinese have already deployed some 20,000 troops in Africa to guard Chinese investments in mines and oilfields in places like Sudan.

While no one has yet joined any dots showing that Ottawa is reflecting a growing concern about Chinese economic hegemony in Washington, an executive with an Ottawa-based corporate think tank doesn't dismiss the linkage.

"Remember that China is the same country the Pentagon war-gamers now size up as America's adversary in any new world war," he says, "figuring out which Chinese cities to target with nukes and which U.S. cities would be hit first.

"But putting that aside, even America's economic policymakers are anxious about China's growing power. When they extrapolate China's fantastic GDP growth rates into the future, it boggles the mind."

For both Canada and the U.S., the current talk of reining in China is motivated by a new type of fear.

"In the past you might not have balked at a one-off deal, where the Chinese buy a Noranda and you can go back to sleep," says the think-tank executive.

"But Alcan and Inco are widely held too, so where does it end? Ottawa wants some kind of mechanism to control this phenomenon, so Canadians don't wake up one morning and ask how they all ended up working for the Chinese government."

David Olive

January 30, 2005 at 11:04 AM in China | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Former Powell Aide Denies Spy Charge, Associates Say

The New York Times > Washington > Former Powell Aide Denies Spy Charge, Associates Say

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JOEL BRINKLEY

ASHINGTON, Sept. 17 - A former senior State Department official at the center of accusations over possible Taiwanese espionage has told associates that he never passed any classified information to contacts from Taiwan, the associates said Friday.
The former official, Donald W. Keyser, has also denied that he received any financial compensation for passing any information to the Taiwanese, but he has acknowledged that he may have been sloppy in his reporting of foreign contacts, the associates said.

The former official, Donald W. Keyser, has also denied that he received any financial compensation for passing any information to the Taiwanese, but he has acknowledged that he may have been sloppy in his reporting of foreign contacts, the associates said.

Mr. Keyser, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Chinese issues, was charged Wednesday with not reporting a secret side trip he made to Taiwan last year during an official government trip to Japan, and officials say they suspect that he passed delicate information to Taiwanese contacts in Washington.

Neither he nor his lawyer has made any public comments since his arrest, and Mr. Keyser's private comments to associates offer the first hint of a possible defense.

In an affidavit in the case, the F.B.I. said agents who had Mr. Keyser under surveillance saw him giving and showing documents to two Taiwanese government contacts at meetings in the Washington area in July and August, just after he had resigned the State Department. One such document was marked "Discussion Topics," the F.B.I. said.

The affidavit said Mr. Keyser had told the F.B.I. that he would often prepared written "talking points" for his two Taiwanese contacts. Mr. Keyser went further in his assertions this week to associates, saying he never shared any classified information with the Taiwanese.

The associates who have had contact with him since his arrest worked with him in government and were generally admiring of his work but did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the case.

While the longtime Foreign Service officer has been charged only with making false statements to the government by concealing his trip to Taiwan in 2003, investigators are continuing to pursue broader espionage accusations as well, officials said.

Mr. Keyser also faced accusations of a security breach in 1999, when he and five other State Department employees were disciplined over a missing laptop computer that contained secret information.

Still, his arrest this week has shocked many former colleagues at the State Department, who described him as a committed public servant.

Mr. Keyser, 61, was first commissioned as a Foreign Service officer at the State Department in 1972 and, over the years, held senior government positions in Washington as well as in American embassies in Japan and China.

He held top-secret security clearance and was promoted in January to principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs before stepping down in July.

During his years in the State Department, Mr. Keyser never showed any favoritism or bias toward Taiwan in its continuing diplomatic tension with China, associates and former colleagues said. If he had, they added, he would have stood out among others in the foreign service.

"I don't know of any senior officials who are pro-Taiwan," one former senior State Department official said.

He and others said Foreign Service officers largely viewed some Taiwanese officials' struggle to stay separate from China as a distraction, when the truly important relationship for the United States is China.

Carl W. Ford Jr., an assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research until he retired last year, worked directly with Mr. Keyser. He agreed that few if any State Department officials were openly pro-Taiwan.

He added that a handful of them "are at least neutral.''

"And Don was very much down the middle. That did set him apart from the others."

Mr. Ford, like others interviewed, said he was "more than surprised" to learn of Mr. Keyser's arrest. "I found it incredible. I never saw him as disloyal."

Ted Gallen Carpenter, an East Asia expert at the Cato Institute in Washington, said he encountered Mr. Keyser often at conferences and other events.

He said, "He always struck me as balanced and prudent in his approach."

September 19, 2004 at 11:03 AM in China | Permalink | TrackBack (16) | Top of page | Blog Home

Mystery Taiwan woman in US spy storm named

Mystery Taiwan woman in US spy storm named - SEPT 19, 2004

By Lawrence Chung
A MYSTERIOUS Taiwan woman intelligence officer who accompanied a former senior US diplomat on an unauthorised trip to Taiwan has been identified by the island's media.

Ms Chen Nien-tzu, 34, a Taiwan National Security Bureau agent based in Washington, has been known only as Foreign Person One by US intelligence officials.

The former US official was Donald Keyser, a top adviser to US Secretary of State Colin Powell on China issues. He has been charged with concealing the trip in September last year.

According to an affidavit presented to the court by the FBI, Keyser had frequent contacts with Foreign Person One, despite the sharp differences in ranking and age between the two.

He is almost 30 years her senior.

While Keyser was an assistant secretary of state before he retired in July, Ms Chen was a low-level agent, whose name was not even listed by the Taiwanese mission in the United States.

The affidavit said on Sept 3, 2003, that Keyser flew to Taiwan from Japan for a three-day sightseeing trip. Washington-based Foreign Person One flew all the way back to Taiwan to accompany him.

On May 29 this year, Keyser took a long weekend trip to New York by train with Foreign Person One, the affidavit said, but made no suggestion about the status of their relationship.

The 1.65-m-tall Ms Chen, who just celebrated her 34th birthday, had graduated from the political science institute of National Taiwan University.

She later worked at the National Security Bureau, and was posted to Britain, before being sent to the US, cable channel TVBS said.

Taipei-based China Times described her as a very popular cheerleader in high school.

The paper said Ms Chen had served as an assistant of then legislator Chen Chien-jen of the opposition Kuomintang for three month after she graduated. The legislator later became Taiwan's representative to the US.

Ms Chen married her university sweetheart shortly after she graduated, but they divorced after she was posted to Britain.

News of Ms Chen's return to Taiwan yesterday sent the local media on a hunt for her. The National Security Bureau yesterday refused to disclose her whereabouts.

Foreign Ministry officials refuted reports which suggested any love relationship between Keyser and Ms Chen or that he was set up by Taiwan, who used her to seduce him.

Keyser had passed documents to Ms Chen and her boss, identified by as Lieutenant General Huang Kuang-hsun - the island's highest-ranking intelligence officer posted to the US.

September 19, 2004 at 10:59 AM in China | Permalink | TrackBack (135) | Top of page | Blog Home