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US waiver on China: Chinese gains without concessions

	December 04, 2000

US decision last week to waive sanctions on China but to continue on the recipients of its missile assistance, namely Pakistan and Iran, continues to draw talk by political observers in New Delhi. The US on November 21 waived sanctions on China related to the export of missiles and related technology and imposed them on Pakistan and Iran. Washington said, this was in response to a Chinese anti-proliferation statement issued earlier in the day.



According to a section of observers, China gave up little but gained a lot by striking deal with the United States under which it promised to ban sale of missiles parts. The Chinese have failed to live up to previous, though less explicit. accords on weapons proliferation and it is far from clear that they will do better this time.



According to America's own sanctions determination. China sold only missile components and materials to Iran, not complete ballistic missiles. In contrast. China has given Islamabad complete missiles. their major sub-systems and their production facilities, besides components and materials, according to the State Department. China is unlikely to completely halt its missile aid to Islamabad. Missiles arc at the heart of China's military force as well as its strategy against regional powers like India, Japan and Taiwan. In any case, with North Korea serving as handy conduit, China already has found ingenious ways to route certain missile technologies and parts to Pakistan. That allows it to show its hands to be clean when it needs to, while dirtying them only for more critical transfers.



From the Chinese point of view, missiles sales were probably becoming less lucrative than the launching of American satellites that the new arrangement clears the way for. An important element in the Chinese decision was the fact that deals with Pakistan, China's most important market for missile technology, had become less lucrative as Islamabad's new "developed" missile programme is meeting its most pressing needs from North Korea. China delivered so much missile materials to Pakistan that there was now less demand from Islamabad. "The Chinese don't see the need for additional systems for export to Pakistan," said Gary Mihollin, director of Wisconsin project on nuclear arms control. In early 1990s, China supplied Pakistan with several dozens of M-ll missiles, a solid fuel version of the Scud-B missile. At about the same time, North Korea began to supply technology to Pakistan based on their liquid-fueled Nodong missile. Pakistan needs to be able to threaten all of India and the Nodong from North Korea gives them that capability and the missile from China doesn't. The New York Times quoted the experts as saying that Pakistan built its Ghauri rocket on the Nodong model. The Ghauri has far superior range and payload. Against this, Chinese M- II has a range of 28 km and carrying capacity of 1,100 pound.



For India, the US-China deal is bad in every aspect. The double-reward it carries for Beijing is evident not only from China being fully absolved of its past misdeeds, but also from the fact that it gains space cooperation with the US and will get licences potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars to launch US commercial satellites atop its rockets. In typical Chinese way, Beijing is set to make money both ways from the deal - from the clandestine missile exports to Pakistan and from launching US satellites. The message is that Washington does not care whether Chinese transfers undermine India's security. As long as such proliferation does not directly impact on US interests, Washington is ready to cut a deal with Beijing.



Washington's deal with China thus stinks. For nearly a decade after Beijing's first M-ll transfers to Pakistan came to light, the US insisted that it was trying to make a sanctions determination. It justified the delay by claiming its domestic law demanded a high standard of evidence, higher than China's own acknowledgement that some such transfers had taken place. When it reluctantly made the determination last month that various types of missile transfers indeed had occurred, it also struck a deal with Beijing that no sanctions would ensue. In one stroke, it forgave China for all its past transfers that were made in breach of Beijing's solemn pledges.



US technology sales have significantly strengthened China's commercial competitiveness and aided its broad-based military modernization. The first, which has yielded an annual trade surplus with America of nearly $ 60 billion, feeds into the second. The flow of US technology, both official and illicit, has helped China to improve the reliability of its Long March rockets and boosted its programme to build a new generation of lighter, road-mobile missiles.



US policy-makers at present can take a relaxed view of China's technological improvements as the Chinese military remains far inferior to its American counterpart and the only weapons it possess to threaten the US are 20 aging, vintage strategic missiles of dubious reliability and range. In contrast, China's military modernization, exemplified by the deployment of hundreds of new medium-range missiles along its frontiers in the past five years alone, only adds to India's vulnerabilities.

The unchanging story ever since the Sino-US nuclear cooperation agreement of 1985 has been that each time Washington discovers• that China has reneged on a promise, it presents new carrots to wheel out another Chinese promise. Indian security comes under direct pressure both ways by the broken Chinese promises that result in the advent of offensive new systems to India's west, and by the high technology the US provides Beijing to win non-proliferation pledges.

As far as Pakistan and Iraq are concerned, the US decision to impose sanctions on them is of no significance. The US was hardly issuing any licences for export of controlled items to Pakistan's Ministry of Defence and Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission. So the newest two-year sanctions on them are trifling in addition to duplicating already-existing punitive measures. The sanctions on three Iranian institutions are a joke at best. Not only is the entire State of Iran under a stringent US trade embargo, the only real promise China has kept to date is a halt to all missile sales to Teheran.

If the deal with Beijing is significant in any way, it is for what it fails to achieve. First, China has still given no signal that it intends to formally join the 32 nation US-led Missile Technology Control Regime. All it has done is to agree to put in place a set of export controls of the same sort as MTCR, although it had pledged years ago to observe the MTCR guidelines. Second, the entire deal hinges on Chinese assurances, with no provision for any kind of verification, as State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher acknowledged. Third, China's 100-odd missile entities are under its Defence Ministry, but the deal is with the foreign Ministry that has little control over them.

The Americans have frequently talked of imposing sanctions against China, but have never actually got down to doing so, in spite of the various CIA and intelligence reports that have determined that China transferred missile and nuclear technology and components to Pakistan, such as the 34 M-Ils in 1992, which are now an integral part of Pakistan's long range missile programme. In doing so, China takes advantage of a technicality into MTCR which says that the export ban concerns only missiles carrying a payload of 500 kgs over' a distance of 300 kms. The M-lls sold to Pakistan had a range of 280 kms, but the American estimation was that its "inherent capability" could exceed the range stipulated under the MTCR.



China, for its part, steadfastly maintains that it has not infringed the 1994 agreement with the US, but that agreement allows China to export missile components and technologies not amounting to complete systems, an interpretation large enough to satisfy Pakistani requirements. The M-Ils themselves were supplied in a broken down condition, which is one reason why the CIA took so long to determine that a transfer had taken place. Apart from the difficulty in pinning China down to the spirit of the agreement, if not its letter, there is also pressure from the powerful business lobby in the US.

The only sanctions imposable are those decreed by the US Arms Export Control law which, apart from affecting export of defence and dual-use technologies, has wider trade implications. This law is primarily meant to satisfy domestic opinion, that is, Congress, and in all the tussles over China between them and the business lobby notably over the permanent normal trade relations act, it is the latter which has had come up trumps so far. It is unlikely that sanctions will affect the powerful strategic rationale that sustains Sin0-Pakistani technological collaboration in any manner that either India or the US may consider significant.



Chin's manned space programme



Meanwhile in an effort to boost its bid to become a fully fledged superpower in the 21st century, China has announced an ambitious, 20-year plan to develop a manned space programme and intensify its exploration of outer space. If successful, China would join the US and Russia as the third major power in space. China says it plans to launch its first manned space flight "within a decade, paving the way for a flight to the moon and lunar exploration. "Within 20 years and beyond" the Chinese hope to have penetrated deeper into outer space, concentration their efforts primarily on systematically exploring and exploiting space for economic and technological benefits.



These strategic goals are articulated for the first time ever in a white paper released last month by Beijing' State Council entitled "China's Space Activities." The paper refers to the space programme as an "integral part of the State's comprehensive development strategy" aimed at reviving the country through science and technology. The country already possesses nuclear and hydrogen bombs and has deployed its own satellites ..

According to the white paper, China began developing its manned space programme in 1992. The government says it already has a space shuttle and "highly reliable" booster rockets for launches, and a pool of trained astronauts. With the maiden voyage of the unmanned Shenzhou shuttle last November, China became the world's third country able to both launch and retrieve space shuttles and satellites.



According to the White paper, Chinese booster. rockets are currently capable of transporting kilograms of material to low orbital paths and up to 5,100 kilograms to the furthest orbits.