Sven Kraemer - China's MFN Status

Sven F. Kraemer
Former Director of Arms Control, National Security Council Staff, 1981-1987

6 June 1996 - Senate Foreign Relations Committee
China's Most Favored Nation Status

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me an opportunity to testify on the security dimension of China's Most Favored Nation status and the U.S.-China relationship. This marks my third appearance as a witness before your Committee. The last time was in March of last year on the START and ABM Treaties, which also raise very troublesome security questions for the American people.

Within the next decade or two, China will be a great power, one of the world's two or three most powerful nation. This is inevitable given the number and vitality of its people, China's national assertiveness, its already 3rd ranking economy on the globe and its regional and strategic military might. What is not inevitable, and what American policy can significantly influence, is whether or not China's great power status and assertiveness will turn to aggression and whether China can turn from its reactionary Communist ideology and the temptations of militant nationalism to the path of democracy and peace.

U.S. leadership will be essential for reformers and reform in China in setting high standards in human rights, trade, and security issues. A new generation of reform-minded Chinese needs our witness and our help against an authoritarian tide, just as the Helsinki accords and international security standards gave critical legitimacy and support to the voices of freedom behind the Soviet empire's Iron Curtain.

I - TRADE ARGUMENTS AGAINST MFN

This is where U.S. debate on the Most Favored Nation status for China fits into the longterm perspective. The debate comes at a strategic cross-roads and deserves your most serious deliberation, in contrast with the Clinton administration's confused policy patchwork. You can significantly help, or harm, the cause of responsible, peaceful behavior by China towards its own people, its neighbors, the United States and the globe at large.

In terms of trade issues, I believe the United States should not conduct business as usual by extending MFN to China this year, but should step up the pressure in support of reform. China has broken 'numerous agreements and its trading behavior has not met proper international trade standards, much less standards deserving of a "most favored" characterization or the "free trade" or "normal trade rules" title with which some would rename MFN. China has too often acted erratically and illegally, pirating our patents, restricting markets, and engaging in corrupt practices, even as it has built up a $35 billion trade surplus against the United States and as it ships some 40% of its exports to our shores.

The $35 billion surplus and 40% export figure prove that China needs America's technology, investments and markets far more than we need China's. While a suspension of MFN will bring some short term losses in American dollars and jobs, imagine how much greater those will be if -- through kow-towing steps such as the unconditional extension of MFN -America acquiesces in China's trade abuses, cuts the ground out under the reformers and sets the United States up for far greater long-term losses as China's ill gotten gains begin dramatically to undercut our competitive advantage in key economic sectors and begins to cost us far larger numbers of dollars and jobs.

The $35 billion surplus and 40% export figure also prove that we have very substantial economic leverage visa vis China. We should precondition MFN on implementation of proper economic standards to replace those of piracy, corruption tariffs and closed markets. We, not China, have the real grievance and the stronger hand. Why kow-tow with further concessions? Why not stick to tough standards and build credibility and performance for the future?

B - THE SECURITY DIMENSION - TEN REALITY CHECKS

An equal playing field for free trade can only be assured by political freedoms and backed by sound security policies. Therefore, MFN and trade must always be considered in the context of profound moral and strategic questions involving human rights and security, not just trade. Yesterday's Tiananmen anniversary should remind us that even more than trade, issues of human rights and security are likely to determine China's adoption or rejection of the paths of democracy and peace and the ultimate success or failure of America's relationship with China.

Thousands of voices of freedom of China's new generation were brutalized in Tiananmen by the "People's Liberation Army" of the "People's Republic of China." What misnomers. What "liberation" if there is no real political freedom? What "republic" if there is no real liberation? What peace if Tibet, Taiwan and Hong Kong can be threatened and if proliferation can be conducted as state policy. What secure trade and what secure peace if there is no democracy and if agreements cannot be trusted or enforced?

You are hearing from others here today about China's continued abuses in the fields of trade and human rights. For my part, I will focus on security issues neglected by officials and media who prefer the post- Cold War illusion that strategic threats have disappeared, that democracies and dictators are not really all that different, that America is unassailable and invincible, and that we and our allies need to do little or nothing to provide for the common defense other than have reasonably acceptable trade relations. President Clinton recently said that China's greatest security threat to America was its pollution potential from cars.

The Clinton administration expected that its stepped up "engagement" policy would inevitably make China an increasingly democratic and peaceful strategic partner of the United States. But that is not what has happened, and matters went wrong early. After his first trip to China, in March 1994, Secretary of State Christopher worried that "China is going in the wrong direction." A proper policy shift would then have encouraged reform and reformers by vigorous and consistent U.S. leadership in pressing for high standards in China's behavior and in the U.S.China relationship. Regrettably, however, the Clinton policy became even more than before one of ambiguous signals, lost opportunities, and appeasement. Responsibilities have been neglected and opportunities lost, the cause or reform has been set-back and new dangers are on the horizon for the American people and her democratic allies in the Pacific.

It is time for reality checks. It's time for bottom-up reviews and in- depth hearings. It's time to take the blinders off about dangerous strategic realities about China compounded by Clinton administration policy gambles.

1. Communist China is Not Democratic and China's Military Leaden Are Not Under Democratic Control.

The overall strategic reality about China is that neither China's political and military leaders nor their programs are under democratic control and that China's proliferation activities and its imperial drive to be a regional and worm power in economic and military terms continues, unchecked by democratic limits and too often appeased by foreign powers including the United States.

The basic economic and political reality is that notwithstanding economic progress especially in Beijing and the coastal cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou, a struggle continues between China's reformers and the old party cadre and clans who resist reform and who seek to maintain a Communist society and tight national cohesion during the transition from Deng's "preeminent leadership."

In reality, the People's Republic of China is not a "republic" any more than the People's Democratic Republics of Eastern Europe under Soviet rule. Taiwan and Hong Kong are far more democratic and far more like real republics. The "people" the PRC leadership still most stands for are those of the families or "clans" of the senior Communist Party officials and the senior officer cadre of the People's Liberation Army. They dominate political, economic, cultural and military life. For reasons of ideology, power and privilege they are determined to avoid Mikhail Gorbachev's "perestroika" and "glasnost" reforms, which overthrew Gorbachev and the Communist dictatorship and ended the Soviet Union.

In this context, official Chinese claims that China is spending only $5 billion a year on defense are patently untrue. A U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) study published in 1994 provides DoD estimates of over $30 billion and U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency estimates of about $50 billion annually. Expenditures have risen since then and are supplemented by high-technology acquisitions through high priority trade and intelligence operations. In this context too, official Chinese claims that it is not proliferating technologies and/or weapons of mass destruction abroad are also untrue.

There is no way of knowing the correct defense figures or program details since there is no free Congress with the power of the purse and of appointment, nor any free press or free political questioning. The Clinton administration all to often simply accepts China's explanations, excuses and behavior and even augments China's emerging strategic threat.

2. China's Military Modernization Conventional and Strategic Strike Forces

China is building up modern strike forces designed for regional and internal military roles and that it's strategic missiles, which can reach the United States, are being substantially augmented in their mobility and their offensive capability.

A potential Chinese strategic threat is officially denied in the Clinton administration's public intelligence estimates about future missile threats and is generally ignored by officials and media focused militarily on China's gun-boat diplomacy in the South China Seas and on its military exercises and missile threats in and around Taiwan. China's announced military doctrine and programs call for highly mobile strike forces, with new generations of ships (including submarines, destroyers and possibly a carrier) and advanced naval and land-based fighter aircraft. These systems, some being acquired from abroad, are to be equipped with modern weapons systems and high-tech command and communications linkages. The strike forces appear to have both regional and internal security functions in asserting Beijing's far-reaching sovereignty claims.

China's vigorous nuclear force modernization program includes a wide range of new strategic and intermediate-range missiles based on land and sea, and appears to be benefitting from new flows of arms and technology from Russia. These systems include new, truck-mobile nuclear missiles whose solid-fuel propulsion and enhanced accuracy adds to their high capability and low vulnerability. Numerous intermediate-range missiles, with strategic potential when launched with lower-weight warheads, are hidden in caves and tunnels and include the DF-4s. Two new ICBM systems are underway to augment the Dong Feng 5/5A (SDD-4) -- the DF-31 and the DF-41. The Julang I (CSS- N-3) missile fired from China's XIA-class nuclear submarines will be augmented by the intercontinental-range DF-31/JL-2.

The launches of advanced Chinese missiles in the vicinity of Taiwan in the summer of 1995 and in March 1996 and the sales of Chinese cruise missiles to Iran which began in the 1980's (and killed Americans on the USS Stark) and were reported upgraded in April 1996, reflect modern cruise missile capabilities with which China is showing its muscle. These capabilities, are reportedly greatly enhanced by the acquisition of Western technology including advanced computers and engines.

3. China-Russia Strategic Collaboration, SS-18s, & Other New Threats

Collaboration and transfer of advanced weapons and technologies, possibly including SS18 strategic ICBMs, are increasing between Chinese and Russian military leaders including hardliners who may wish to work against what some perceive as common, democratic enemy, the United States.

Chinese and Russian military leaders have recently described relations as the best in decades, i.e., since the Stalin-Mao alliance. In September 1993 the two countries agreed not to target or use force against each other, the former an agreement China rejected for the United States when the proposed by the Clinton administration. Following several high-level exchange visits, Yeltsin's April 1996 visit to Beijing feted a close strategic partnership, with Yeltsin asserting that Russia had not found a single point of disagreement with China. No disagreement on proliferation, nuclear testing, technology theft, human rights abuses, border disputes?

Russia shows no apparent hesitation in providing advanced weapons and technologies, including nuclear technologies, to China's military. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Russian military specialists are in China and a February 1996 Congressional staff study reported recent Chinese purchases from Russia as including: 26 SU-27 fighters (with an additional 26 under negotiation, and by now reportedly under contract), 24 Mi-17 helicopters, 10 IL-76 heavy transport planes, 100 S-300 surface-to-air missiles and 4 mobile launchers, advanced rocket engines and missile guidance technology, 100 Klimov/Sarkisov RD33 engines, uranium enrichment technology and nuclear reactors.

An extremely troublesome recent development has been the possible collaboration of senior Russian and Chinese authorities in seeking to transfer to China Russian SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles, the most deadly strategic weapon of the Cold War from a deployment site in Ukraine. All SS-18s are to be destroyed under the START II treaty, but in one of several damaging amendments to the treaty, the Clinton Administration in September 1995 permitted Russia and Ukraine to sell the stages of such systems abroad as "space launchers." Of course anything that can launch a "peaceful" object into space can also launch a warhead.

In January 1996 Ukraine expelled three Chinese nationals for trying to obtain SS-18s at a missile-production facility in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine presumably with the cooperation of the Russian military personnel at the site who oversee nuclear weapons security and the planned movement of the weapons to Russia. In May 1996, these efforts were boldly renewed.

4. China's Nuclear Weapons Tests

China has recently conducted a series of nuclear weapons tests while the United States has not, and the Clinton administration is augmenting China's nuclear strike capabilities.

The United States and Russia have conducted no nuclear tests since 1992, a fact soon likely to impair the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent in a world of evident nuclear ambitions among a number of rogue states. During this period, China has continued a robust nuclear weapons test program even while asserting support for a future Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB), a top Clinton administration priority for 1996. China exploded a one megaton weapon in 1992 and conducted other large-scale nuclear tests in October 1993, in June 1994 (an Hbomb), in October 1994, and in 1995, with indications for further tests in 1996.

China points to France as an excuse, but while France conducted six small-scale underground nuclear tests as precursors to preparing to join the Comprehensive Test Ban agreement (CTB), France contrasts with China in the fact that all French military forces are under assured democratic civilian control, that France has a record of compliance with treaties, and that French military forces, including its nuclear forces, are being sharply reduced.

As in other aspects of China's strategic modernization, Clinton administration policy on China's nuclear testing has been one of continuing acquiescence, and even assistance. Early in the Clinton administration, for example, according to an October 1994 report in The New York Times: "After China's test last October (1993), President Clinton instructed Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary to begin reviewing options to resume American testing at the Nevada test range (but) when this threat drew no response from the Chinese, the White House conceded that nothing it could do in the form of pressure could dissuade Beijing, and the effort was abandoned."

In October 1994, incredibly, Secretary of Defense Perry publicly offered advanced U.S.

S. computer technologies to China for the express purpose of simulating nuclear weapons tests and thus directly increasing potential threats against America's cities if hardliners prevail in China. The computers are reportedly of higher quality than the advanced computers deployed on the U.S. AEGIS cruisers.

5. China's Biological and Chemical Weapons Programs

China has 'a very poor record on chemical and biological warfare agreements and related proliferation activities.

U.S. government reports have repeatedly noted China's violations in these areas. The last annual compliance report to the Congress issued by the President and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, in 1994, noted that: "China's CBM mandated declarations have not resolved U.S. concerns about this program and there are strong indications that China probably maintains its offensive programs." The classified version of this ACDA report reportedly was even more explicit in condemning these treaty violations.

An April 1996 proliferation report issued by the office of Secretary of Defense William Perry, described China's programs as follows: "China has a mature chemical warfare capability and may well have maintained the biological warfare program it had prior to acceding to the Biological Weapons Convention in 1984. It has funded a chemical warfare program since the 1950's and has produced and weaponized a wide variety of agents. Its biological warfare program included manufacturing infectious micro-organisms and toxins. China has a wide range of delivery means available, including ballistic and cruise missiles and aircraft, and is continuing to develop systems with upgraded capabilities."

6. China, Proliferation and Broken Treaties

China, along with Russia, has the world's worst record on the proliferation of components and technologies of weapons of mass destruction to rogue states.We need to consider that those who supply and support rogues must be considered rogues themselves. And, as General Brent Scowcroft, U.S. National Security Advisor in the Ford and Bush administrations, has warned:

"The Chinese military seems to be willing to sell weapons to anyone who can pay the price .... including militant states hostile to the United States."

China has accumulated an abysmal record of broken anti-proliferation treaties and broken U.S. laws. The treaties include the Treaty on Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and the Chemical Weapons Convention. U.S. laws broken by Chinese proliferation activities include the U.S. Nuclear Prevention Act, the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and the National Defense Authorization Act.

China's role in North Korea's nuclear and missile proliferation activities is highly suspect since North Korea's nuclear reactors and missiles closely resemble China's. Denying either knowledge or leverage in North Korea China has opposed tough sanctions against North Korea and has recently refused to participate in multilateral talks on future peaceful developments on the Korean Peninsula.

China has supplied nuclear reactors to Algeria and Iran, chemical weapons materials to Syria and Iran, and missiles to numerous countries including Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. China's most recent illegal proliferation activities reported early in 1996 include sales to: 1) Pakistan (M-11 missiles and 5,000 ring magnets used in gas centrifuges that enrich uranium for weapons) and 2) Iran (ballistic missile components, C-802 missiles, chemical weapons precursors, and nuclear weapons related materials).

A particularly egregious Chinese proliferation activity came to light in March 1996 when, as reported by The Washington Post:

"U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that companies in China are providing Iran with several virtually complete factories suited for making deadly poison gases, an act that may violate a U.S. law as well as China's pledge to abide by a global treaty banning such assistance, according to U.S. officials .... For more than a year, Washington has been monitoring a steady flow of Chinese chemical-related equipment to Iran, where it is being installed in new factories ostensibly meant to produce industrial chemicals for commercial us. But U.S. officials say the factories have a covert military use and have already complained to Beijing about the assistance without avail. The influx of Chinese technology is helping to fuel what one U.S. official described as 'the most active chemical weapons program' in the Third World."

It appears that Iran may serve as a threatening Middle-Eastern surrogate for China.

The Clinton administration has with only rare and brief exceptions opposed application of the commercial and other sanctions established under U.S. laws and international treaties. For example, the Clinton administration has opposed the demand of Senator Larry Pressler and others to implement the U.S. sanctions required by the 1993 U.S. Defense Authorization Act (cosponsored by then Senator Albert Gore) against nations that transfer advanced weapons to Iran or Iraq. Senator Pressler had noted that China's cruise missile deal with Iran violates U.S. law and "is a vital national security matter and demands immediate attention." The Clinton administration role has been one of appeasement. Far from utilizing the legal and sanctions instruments at hand, the administration has during the past year reportedly failed to act on five such cases placed before the President by the Congress and urging action.

7. China's Espionage and the Abuse of China's Defense "Conversion" and U.S. Aid

China's technological and military espionage activities have been stepped up significantly and are reportedly abetted by the U.S.-China Joint Defense Conversion Commission, established in 1994 by U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry and General Ding Henggao, director of the Commission for Science Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND).

The Clinton administration is ignoring numerous warnings that China is stealing or buying advanced dual use technologies which will undermine our military security and our commercial competitiveness in the future. According to Senator Larry Pressler: "The Chinese are engaged in an unprecedented espionage campaign and nuclear weapons buildup .... but I can't get senior Clinton Administration officials to acknowledge the threat." Representative Nancy Pelosi, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, has similarly warned that "China is engaged in a full-court press to obtain American high technology to modernize its military .... "Yet, says Pelosi, Washington has "turned a blind eye to this practice."

In addition to serious economic consequences, including long mn damage to the competitiveness of U.S. companies, dangerous security implications derive from China's acquisition of sensitive technologies whose transfer the Clinton administration has encouraged notwithstanding their high military and proliferation potential, e.g. advanced computers, cruise missile engines and satellites. According to Time magazine, U.S. intelligence officials reportedly warned the administration about one such transfer in April 1994, involving the sale of rocket engines, that "China will gain high-quality military technology, which could be used for a new generation of cruise missiles...(which) would put most of the rest of Asia within range of Chinese nuclear attack."

Secretary of Defense Perry has continued to place great confidence in the reliability of General Ding, COSTIND and China's "conversion," and has sought substantial U.S. taxpayers funds to support the COSTIND effort even though this project and its participants are highly suspect. U.S. defense intelligence analysts have identified COSTIND as an espionage organization "attempting to steal foreign technology with military applications, primarily from the United States." General Ding is described in his own official biography as having "organized and coordinated research and production of strategic missiles and the launching of satellites."

China's paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, has officially defined China's "defense conversion" programs as follows: "Combine military and civilian, combine war and peace, give first priority to military products and make civilian products finance the military." The Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. General James Clapper, has testified to the Congress, the China's the People's Liberation Army plays a role in all Chinese industrial and business organizations, especially those involving joint ventures with foreigners. Through the People's Liberation Army ventures and the participation of the Chinese intelligence services in the PLA work, U.S. technology is thus immediately vulnerable to being skimmed off for the purpose of accelerating China's ambitious military modernization programs, programs which may threaten U.S. allies and U.S. forces in the future.

It should be noted that while China enthusiastically uses its military and business relationships as well as its overseas students and business contacts for technological espionage, it severely restricts the flow of even appropriate legitimate information to western businesses. New restrictions announced in February 1996 led Clinton administration Trade Representative Mickey Kantor to note plaintively that: "This is, of course, an issue of free speech and censorship, but it is also at the heart of our trade relationship ....clearly it is a step in the wrong direction, to state the obvious." Indeed.

8. Chinese Colonialism

In its regional imperial drive, China has used military force not only against Taiwan, but also in pressing its extensive territorial claims in territories of the South China Sea, including the oil-rich Spratley and Pescadores islands, in gun boat battles with Philippine and Vietnamese ships. China is also building bases in Burma and in the Indian Ocean.

In support of its extensive sovereignty claims beyond the mainland, China has engaged in gun boat diplomacy, has sought aerial refueling capabilities, has bought advanced strike aircraft such as SU-27s, and is seeking an aircraft carrier and other force projection capabilities while also building up mobile rapid-reaction forces around China's periphery.

Fighting what senior Communist leaders consider the virus of democracy and self-rule wherever it arises -- whether in Tiannanmen, in Tibet, in Taiwan or in Hong Kong -- China rejects international human rights standards in Beijing, Tibet, or anywhere else in China's orbit and has made clear that when it takes over Hong Kong in July 1997 and Macao in 1998 it will remove existing democratic laws, officials and institutions.

China appears to view the 21 million people of Taiwan much like Saddam Hussein viewed the people of Kuwait, which he called Iraq's 19th province and then proceeded to invade. Mainland China has not controlled Taiwan for over a hundred years, since 1895, and has maintained a Communist Party dictatorship while Taiwan has made great strides toward democracy. Taiwan surely has no desire or capability to attack the mainland and represents no conceivable military threat whatsoever, yet Chinese acts of war launched missiles at Taiwan and the international waters around it.

Isn't it time that the people of Taiwan should feel secure in their democracy and their self-determination without fear of attack from China and that the United States fully supports them in this process, as required by morality and by U.S. law. If China can accept "two systems one country," why not "two systems two countries?" As The New York Times editorialized in February 1996, "There increasingly is a case to be made for Taiwanese independence. Taiwanhas not been ruled by China for most of the last century. It has a different political and economic system and its people enjoy a freedom and affluence many rightly fear could not survive under Communist rule."

9. A Range of Potential Threats to America's Security

U.S. intelligence and defense department officials have recently noted that China's military build-up, both strategic and conventional, has increasingly serious implications for United States security.

In May 1994, the head of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Office, Lt. General Malcolm O'Neill, .told the Congress that U.S. intelligence analysts expected growing numbers of Chinese missiles to be aimed at the United States and its interests. While China signed a nontargeting agreement with Russia it turned down Clinton administration requests for such a symbolic arrangement (unverifiable though it would have been) and some analysts report that China's nuclear doctrine calls for use of nuclear weapons not simply for deterrence against hard military targets such as U.S. missile silos, but against "soft" targets, i.e. American cities. The Clinton administration has arms control sanctions or missile defense programs which could possibly handle such threats.

In a 1995, the Office of Net Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense concluded that the pace of China's military modernization program, which includes substantial conventional force improvements, would enable China to defeat U.S. forces in a regional military conflict in Asia by the year 2020.

During the March 1996 Chinese missile launches in and around Taiwan, a Chinese official went so far as to threaten Los Angeles with nuclear attack if the U.S. were to defend Taiwan against invasion from mainland China.

In recent months, Chinese criminal mafias have been caught repeatedly in immigrant smuggling and narcotics operations directed against the United States. A new level of danger with potential fire-spark implications for America's inner cities just occurred, in May 1996. Chinese agents, linked to a Chinese company directed by officials tied to China's top leaders, were caught in an FBI sting operation selling 2,000 AK-47 assault rifles, numerous hand grenades, and Stinger anti- aircraft missiles to Americans whom the Chinese apparently assumed were criminals or radical militants likely to use them against American institutions.

10. In Sum: The Fatal Consequences of Clinton Administration Policy Incoherence

Senators, I have never seen anything like this administration's high risk gambles and continuing confusion and weakness in U.S. defense and foreign policy. Not in all the twenty five years I served as an official in six administrations, four in the White House, and on Senate and House staffs, from-John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan. Unless reversed, this administration's policies will bring America major disasters, of which a failed China policy will be just one.

At the height of the 1996 Taiwan crisis, and as China had been caught in major proliferation schemes a Washington Post editorial captured some of the flavor of the Clinton administration's fatally confused China strategy as follows:

"Let's go through this carefully. American intelligence believes China has been selling sensitive nuclear weapons related equipment .... American law and policy prescribe a range of economic and other penalties for these dangerous contributions to nuclear spread. Yet the Clinton administration is described as leaning toward waiving the sanctions. The reason given is to ease tensions with Beijing and to improve the climate in which efforts would be made to persuade China to curb those exports in the future. That's right: The Chinese are the accused violators, and the Americans--as the complaining and injured party--are backing off...."

The Post editorial continued:

"It is already established that the Clinton administration is putting trade over human rights in its China policy, even though the mellowing that trade was expected to bring about is so far not in sight. Now it is being established that the administration is putting trade--'There are tremendous commercial opportunities there, export chief Ron Brown said this week--over nonproliferation as well. The administration's China policy is on the edge of incoherence. The Chinese could be forgiven for thinking that in any given case they can press at the margins, play on the differences among the elements of American government and society and have their way by standing firm." (Emphasis added.)

In fostering extraordinarily weak norms for multilateral arms control and in all too often appeasing Russia's hardliners on START, national missile defenses, Chechnya (Boils Lincoln?), economic reform, etc. the administration set very poor precedents in undercutting reformers and dealing with Communist nationalists, not only in Russia but also in a China unaccustomed to keeping agreements or meeting international human rights standards.

Now, unwilling to punish China's violations of numerous existing arms control agreements, the administration has stepped up the flow of advanced dual purpose technology to China and pushed for new arms control agreements which China as unlikely to heed in areas of nuclear testing, chemical weapons, retargeting, etc.. Trade, and unfair trade at that, has been elevated far above the efforts to improve the human rights, proliferation and military abuses that should have been at the core of a developing U.S.-Chinese relationship.

As Deng fades from the scene, it is especially necessary for America to stop treating China's leaders like children and seriously to step up to China's hardliners and to buttress the cause of the reformers and fundamental reform. It is essential to hold China to fulfillment of its international obligations in human rights, trade and arms control. We need a Pacific Democracy Defense Program and more. U.S. appeasement will only increase the militancy and leverage of hardliners in China and elsewhere around the world. Unless reversed, feckless current U.S. China policy is sure to set back the cause of reform, responsibility and peace, and to increase potential Chinese threats not only to key U.S. allies in Asia, but to vital U.S. interests in that region and to the United States homeland itself.

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Sven F. Kraemer Former Director of Arms Control, National Security Council Staff, 1981-1987

6 June 1996 - Senate Foreign Relations Committee China's Most Favored Nation Status