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China Trading Privileges to Help Communists Rebuild Military Threat to America

May 26, 2000

When the House voted May 24 to grant Red China permanent normal trading privileges, Rep. Duncan Hunter led a band of conservatives who warned that the vote would help the bellicose communist nation rebuild its military to threaten the United States. "Whichever side of this debate one is on, everyone here has to concede American dollars are arming Communist China today," said Hunter, a California Republican, likening the global situation to 1941 and the sudden American realization that Japan was a danger. "If the cemeteries of this country one day hold the bodies of Americans in uniform killed with weapons purchased by American trade dollars -- that will be the greatest tragedy of this new 21st century."

But Hunter's arguments did not carry the day during the House vote on the Red China trade bill -- even among fellow Republicans, who have historically been wary of the Asian power. The question of what actual threat Red China poses to the United States and its allies is a murky one, defense officials claim. Red China is decades away from becoming a world military power, claims a Pentagon report declassified last year. Nevertheless, many Red China watchers like Edward Timperlake, a former Republican House staff member and writer, assert that Red China's stepped up military spending could pose a threat to U.S. interests in the region and make it a superpower within a decade.

The trade bill now moves to the Senate, where Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican, has vowed to press for an annual review of Red China's sale of military hardware and technology to other countries, including North Korea and Pakistan, and impose sanctions. Thompson said he was considering adding the measure as an amendment to the trade bill.

"Right now, they're a very capable regional power," said Timperlake, co-author of "Year of the Rat: How Bill Clinton Compromised U.S. Security for Chinese Cash." "They're moving rather quickly to superpower status."

Red China has the world's largest standing army -- 3 million strong, compared with 1 million active and Reserve units in the U.S. Army. Red China is moving to strengthen its naval and air forces with Russian equipment. After failing for 30 years to develop its own fighter aircraft, Red China has bought dozens of Russian models that are akin to the U.S. Air Force's F-16. It has also beefed up its fleet of warships by buying a Russian destroyer that carries a high-speed missile that could threaten U.S. ships in the Pacific. One destroyer was delivered on Christmas Day; another is on order. Red China has hundreds of short-range missiles aimed at Taiwan.

Red China clearly sees the United States as its "main enemy" according to 21 retired military and national security leaders, who wrote an open letter to Congress this week urging a vote against the trade measure. Those signing the letter -- including retired Gen. Carl Mundy, former commandant of the Marine Corps, and William R. Graham, former science adviser to President Reagan -- outlined the Chinese communist increases in military spending and the combative comments from communist officials.

In December, the letter said, Red China's defense minister, Gen. Chi Haotian, told senior officers that they must prepare for the "inevitable" war to break the U.S. "hegemony" in the Pacific.

Though Red China is shoring up its air force and navy, U.S. analysts and government officials said, it is putting more emphasis on upgrading missiles of short, medium and intercontinental range. The number of short-range missiles aimed at Taiwan could rise to 650 by 2005, according to Pentagon estimates.

Meanwhile, Red China is updating its intercontinental nuclear missiles, about two dozen of which can strike the U.S. mainland. One of the missiles, the DF-31, unveiled last year, can hit the Western United States. By the middle of the decade, a DF-41 will be deployed that can strike the Eastern United States, said Richard Fisher, a senior analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, a conservative think tank.

The United States, with thousands of nuclear warheads, has an overwhelming edge over Red China. But Fisher and others suggest that even a few dozen missiles could deter an American leader from intervening to aid Taiwan against a communist attack. Once Taiwan is back in the communist fold, Fisher said, Peking's nuclear capability could be employed to make Red China the pre-eminent power in Asia, disabling U.S. alliances with political and military pressure from Japan to the Indian Ocean and into the Persian Gulf.

The communists are also spending more money on computer warfare. Last year, Chinese communist generals went to Moscow with $10 billion in cash and bought numerous high-tech weapons that can disable computers, said Frank J. Gaffney Jr., a former Pentagon official who now heads the conservative Center for Security Policy.

These developments are troubling to Fisher and others. If the trade deal is a spur to rapid economic growth in Red China, "that will allow them to fund a more rapid military growth," he said.

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