Sun Nation
Chinese buildup is fueled by missiles
Alleged theft of secrets points to new emphasis on high-tech weapons
By Tom Bowman
And Mark Matthews Sun NationWASHINGTON -- Behind the furor over the alleged Chinese theft of nuclear technology from the United States there's growing concern over how quickly Beijing is modernizing and expanding its military and the threat it poses to the United States and U.S. allies in Asia and the Pacific.
Few people are shocked that China wants U.S. nuclear-weapons secrets. But the alleged theft of designs for America's most advanced nuclear warhead grabs attention because it fits an apparent Chinese strategy of using high technology -- particularly missiles -- to make up for an outdated conventional force.
China is aiming hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles at Taiwan in a policy of coercion that analysts say is designed to bring the island back under mainland authority without having to fire a shot.
But it also has the oil-rich South China Sea in its sights and may have designs on strategic waterways. In time, some experts fear, China hopes to use its new-found missile strength to penetrate a future U.S. missile-defense shield and shrink the U.S. presence in Asia.
Meanwhile, the danger of miscalculation looms, prompting a number of national-security analysts in Washington to take a new look at China as a long-term strategic problem for the United States.
"Decisions regarding how to address China's increasingly aggressive regional and nuclear posture will have to be made calmly but promptly," Sen. Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican and a leading congressional voice on foreign affairs, wrote last week in an article published by the Washington Post. "These decisions will not be easy or inexpensive."
China's concentration on missile development and deployment "is a rather cheap, relatively painless and effective way of achieving much of what they want to achieve: to deter Taiwan independence, bring Taiwan to the table to force political concessions on Taiwan's part," said Bates Gill, a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution.
"What they're doing is putting all their eggs in the missile basket," said Ken Allen, a senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, who served as a U.S. Air Force attache in China from 1987 to 1989. "It's psychological intimidation."
China, which is making lesser attempts at modernizing its navy and air force, is decades away from being able to challenge a global power such as the United States, according to scholars, government officials and a recently declassified Pentagon report.
Yet, by placing its highest priority on a "niche" of missile development, aided by purchases and technology transfers -- as well as spying and theft -- China can more quickly become a threat to both U.S. interests in the region and to the continental United States, according to Gill and other observers.
The alleged leaking of the Los Alamos design information was first reported last weekend by the New York Times. Although the information was said to have been given to the Chinese more than a decade ago, evidence of the espionage did not emerge until a couple of years ago.
The leaked technology would offer the Chinese the eventual ability to place a number of small warheads on sea-launched and other short-range missiles.
Increased threat
Moreover, it would afford the Chinese a chance to increase their relatively small number of missiles capable of reaching the United States, said Douglas Paal, president of the Asia Pacific Policy Center and a former Asia policy-maker in the Bush White House.
"It increases the credibility of any nuclear threat to the United States they may wish to make in the future," agreed Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project, a nonproliferation research group.
Retired Rear Adm. Lloyd R. Vasey, founder of the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former chief of strategy for U.S. forces in the Pacific, termed the alleged theft "a major leap forward with our help."
Multiple warheads coupled with an intercontinental ballistic missile can offer China a chance to hamper U.S. missile defense efforts, specifically a planned nationwide shield that would shoot down an incoming missile with a missile. But if China were able to fire a single missile armed with a number of bombs, the defense would be more difficult.
While China experts are troubled by the alleged theft, many note that China has had the capacity to hit the continental U.S. with missiles since 1981. About 13 Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles are aimed at the United States. That's a minuscule percentage of U.S. nuclear might. The U.S. has about a 500-to-1 nuclear advantage over China, said Gill, the Brookings scholar.
Others, including John Pike, director of the Space Policy Project at the liberal Federation of American Scientists, played down the significance of any Chinese nuclear espionage.
Such miniaturized weapons have been in the U.S. arsenal since the early 1960s, he said. The British developed them in the mid-1960s, and the French in the 1970s.
"The only thing noteworthy about all this is that [the Chinese] were in much less of a hurry to get there than the other previously declared nuclear powers," Pike said.
Clinton policy criticized
The alleged theft of nuclear secrets is the latest charge that threatens to undermine President Clinton's policy of engaging China. Earlier accusations include the claim that China's People's Liberation Army funneled money into Democratic coffers during the 1996 presidential campaign and that the Clinton administration permitted satellite technology sales that could aid Beijing's missile program. Under congressional pressure, the administration blocked the sale of $450 million worth of satellites to China.
Meeting each charge with denials, Chinese officials blame some of the recent bad publicity on a small group of Americans, including human rights advocates, who the Chinese say are bent on sabotaging relations between the world's most populous nation and its most powerful one.
"There are always some people trying to obstruct normal trade relations between the United States and China, including the export of high-technology items," said Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan last Sunday.
There is disagreement over how quickly the Chinese are modernizing their military capabilities.
Gill believes the Chinese are handicapped by various internal challenges -- technological, economic and political -- that can impede progress.
As China tries to shift from a state-controlled economy to a more market-oriented one, government-owned businesses continue to lay off millions of workers. Growing unemployment and bitter resentment at official corruption are sparking protests around the country.
Recognizing the difficulty of the transition, Chinese leaders have focused their foreign policy on maintaining stability abroad so that China can catch up with the developed world.
But two of China's critics, Edward Timperlake, a former Republican House staffer and co-author of "Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash," and Richard D. Fisher Jr., director of the Asian Studies Center at the conservative Heritage Foundation, argue that through technology transfers and the alleged Los Alamos theft, China has been able to forge ahead with its missile development.
"They lopped a decade off their development cycle," said Fisher. "It was a fantastic coup for China."
Fisher said China is also quickly moving ahead with development within one to three years of an intercontinental ballistic missile, a DF-31, capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States. Another ICBM, the DF-41, could come after 2005 with a striking range as far as Florida, he said.
Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey also expects the Chinese to try to acquire new technology on stealth, ballistic missiles and even cyber warfare, a particular danger for a computer-centric nation like the United States. They will try to develop such technologies on their own or obtain them either from the United States or Russia, he said.
Aside from its determined hold on Tibet and its claim to Taiwan, China has not had imperialist ambitions historically, Woolsey said. "But they do like hegemony," he added, and might be tempted to grab neighboring islands in a nationalist outburst to counter a period of domestic unrest.
`Very intelligent munitions'
Of immediate concern are the short-range ballistic missiles as well as cruise missiles that can attack shipping and land-based targets on Taiwan. "They are creating very intelligent munitions, cruise missiles," said Timperlake. "Are we threatened? Absolutely. Has the Clinton administration ignored this? Absolutely."
Among the munitions is the YJ-22 land-attack cruise missile, similar to the U.S. Tomahawk missile, which could be deployed early in the next decade, said Fisher.
The Pentagon report said China's short-range missile force is expected to "grow substantially" in the next several years, while an "aggressive effort" is underway to acquire foreign missile technology, particularly from Russia.
The threat of these short-range missiles has led Taiwan and the United States to consider a missile defense system for the island, which has infuriated China.
In increasingly strident terms, Chinese officials are basically calling for the United States to reduce or withdraw its presence in the Pacific. "In private conversations, they say, `You build missile defenses, and we'll build missiles,' " said Paal, the former Bush policy-maker.
Last week, a Chinese official called together foreign reporters for a three-hour briefing, declaring that a missile defense system for Taiwan would be "the last straw" in U.S.-Chinese relations.
"Pumping F-16s and missile defense systems into an American state -- how would they feel?" the official asked.
Sun staff writers Jonathan Weisman in Washington and Frank Langfitt in Beijing contributed to this article.
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