In Case You Missed It…
Friday, May 15, 1998
Chinese Delivery
"…it seems that the Clinton Administration has finally found a practical application for the Reagan Administration's anti-missile program: improving Communist China's rockets. China's once-unreliable Long March booster was vastly improved with the help of U.S. satellite companies under the Clinton Administration's liberalized export controls. According to the Pentagon, the technology that improved the Long March has also made China's Dong Feng series of strategic nuclear missiles more lethal.
"According to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.), Chairman of the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, U.S. expertise has 'perfected' China's Long March rockets, which are identical in design to Chinese strategic nuclear missiles.
"Engineers from Loral, assisted by engineers from Hughes Electronics, and at the direction of their superiors, charged forward to correct the problems in the Long March,' Rohrabacher said in a floor speech on April 30. 'It seems what happened was a sterile, coldly calculated decision to fix these problems with no consideration of the national-security implications to the United States.' Rohrabacher saw the technology transfer as a betrayal. 'Chinese missiles blowing up on launch is a good thing,' he says. 'We should not be making their missiles better…'
"According to a report of the Senate subcommittee on proliferation, the kind of space technology China has acquired from the United States is just what is needed to make an intercontinental ballistic missile: stage coupling for extended range, accurate guidance, and system integration. And, as I first reported in the Washington Times, the CIA has concluded that 13 of China's 18 long-range strategic missiles have nuclear warheads aimed at American cities. Loral's gain could one day be L.A.'s pain."
By Bill Gertz, National Review, June 1, 1998
Contact the RNC Press Office at 202-863-8550 for more information.
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