WASHINGTON -- Don't build that fallout shelter just yet.

The release Tuesday of the long-awaited Cox committee report on Chinese efforts to obtain U.S. military technology sparked strident words in Washington and stirred speculation of a second Cold War.

But the reality is at odds with the report.

The likelihood of China soon gaining nuclear parity or even posing a serious threat is slim verging on non-existent, security analysts and weapons experts said.

``I assume they've been able to close the gap (with the United States) a little bit,'' said Monte Bullard, a former military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. ``But we haven't exactly been standing still.''

A ``damage assessment'' by the CIA on the implications of any Chinese espionage was unequivocal.

``To date, the aggressive Chinese collection effort has not resulted in any apparent modernization of their deployed security force or any new nuclear weapons deployment,'' said the report released last month.

China is also generally regarded as a ``responsible'' nuclear power, maintaining strict safety controls over its arsenal. Russia, by contrast, has thousands of warheads and tons of enriched uranium and plutonium lacking proper safeguarding.

``Russia is an immediate security concern that's much more grave than China is five, 10 or even 15 years from now,'' said Stan Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which monitors nuclear weapons proliferation

Visions of a `red menace'

Although the chair of the committee, Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Newport Beach, said the panel ``did not engage in surmise; we did not engage in opinion,'' few could read the 900-page tome and not succumb to a vision of a new ``red menace'' rising in the East.

``The select committee judges that (China's) next generation of thermonuclear weapons, currently under development, will exploit elements of stolen U.S. design information,'' the report said.

Additionally, the committee concludes that U.S. warhead designs will soon be used to build China's next generation of mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles. It reaches a similar conclusion about the development of space-based and ground-based anti-satellite laser weapons.

But some panel members seemed less certain the sky was falling.

Rep. John M. Spratt Jr., D-S.C., said the committee ``does not know how big the base of this iceberg is, how much to infer from the size of the tip of the iceberg.''

Though he termed the reported thefts ``one of the worst counterintelligence failures in our nation's history,'' Rep. Norman Dicks, D-Wash., admitted the report's conclusions ``have been written in a worst-case fashion.''

Even assuming the worst case -- that the design information and other U.S. technology now resides in the files of the People's Liberation Army -- many experts said there was no cause for alarm.

Part of the reasoning is based on pure mathematics. The U.S. arsenal includes 11,000 ICBMs and 7,000 strategic nuclear warheads. The Chinese have a maximum of 20 ``East Wind 5'' missiles that can reach the United States.

The Chinese do not have B-2 stealth bombers, Trident submarines or MX missiles.

``They have one nuclear sub, but it's unsafe to operate,'' said Norris. ``There have to be problems; you don't decide just to build one submarine.''

As for the Chinese missiles, experts say they carry heavy 1950s-era warheads. U.S. thermonuclear warheads are significantly smaller and lighter, which is why U.S. missiles can carry multiple warheads a longer distance.

Chinese efforts to obtain the design for the U.S. W-88 warhead were an attempt to build lighter warheads, according to the report. But the design of the W-88 is actually quite old, dating from the 1970s, and the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Harold M. Agnew, said that even if the Chinese stole the computer design codes, ``actually being able to manufacture the total system from a computer code is a different matter.''

Additionally, the Chinese have historically taken a long time to research, develop, test and deploy weapons.

An advanced missile, the DF-31, has been in development for 15 years and has not been deployed.

`Leisurely modernization'

``It is a remarkably leisurely modernization of their weapons systems,'' said John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists, ``and I cannot detect any acceleration of their efforts.''

In fact, some of the security analysts suggested the real aim of the reported Chinese espionage is to make the United States and other Western nations believe that they are ready to accelerate and broaden their nuclear operational capabilities.

``Almost everything they are doing is for psychological and political impact rather than for military impact,'' said Bullard, the former military attaché who now directs the East Asia program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey.

``The Chinese want to demonstrate they have the capacity to do these things,'' said Bullard.

Norris said the Chinese might have already accomplished this goal. He recalled the famous 1995 ``walk-in'' to the CIA by a Chinese citizen, who delivered a secret Chinese document that included stolen U.S. design information about the W-88 warhead.

It was this event that helped spur the formation of the Cox committee.

``Maybe the message this agent was sending to us from the Chinese was, ``Hey, we know how to do this now, so don't mess with us,' '' Norris said. ``That is certainly (nuclear) deterrence on the cheap.''