By Donna Lee Nardo
Lenin predicted the death of capitalism at the hands of greedy businessmen who would one day sell the Communists enough rope to strangle the free enterprise system. Though often dismissed, Lenin’s dark prophecy bears a striking relevance today and should play a role in the debate over the transfer of sensitive technology to China, and America’s overall economic and foreign policy towards the Communist superpower.
Over the past 30 years, Republicans and Democrats alike supported some level of engagement with China. While former Presidents Reagan and Bush approved satellite transfers, President Clinton took several unprecedented actions including dismantling all safeguards attached to such transfers.
The waivers President Clinton granted to Loral Space & Communications and Hughes Electronics represent only the latest in a string of questionable missile, supercomputer, machine tool, oscilloscope and other technology equipment deals that, in effect, reveal the U.S. business and political elite bargaining away our national security.
No sleeping giant, China is making its presence felt on many fronts. The 13 Chinese missiles positioned in our direction weren’t perfected 5 years ago. The nuclear tests recently initiated by India and Pakistan are in large part a product in the chain of U.S. assistance to China and China’s military aid to Pakistan.
As if the failure of U.S. intelligence in catching India’s test preparations weren’t alarming enough, experts say the supercomputers sold to China will enable it to conduct virtual nuclear tests. With no need for physical testing, the Chinese could flex their nuclear muscle with little fear of detection.
Since Clinton assumed office, he has acted to reclassify turbine engines, aircraft and other dual use technologies as “commercial” to ease their passage from U.S. manufacturing plants to China. In the face of the Justice Department’s investigation into Loral’s and Hughes’ ’96 satellite launch atop a Chinese rocket, President Clinton overrode Justice Department and Pentagon advisories and issued another waiver to Loral earlier this year. This decision came on the heels of China President Jiang Zemin’s first official visit to the U.S. last fall which, incidentally, featured stops at the Hughes Corporation’s California headquarters and manufacturing plant.
Rejecting the national security concerns of then Secretary of State Warren Christopher, the Pentagon, Defense Department and CIA, the president shifted the entire satellite licensing operation from the State Department to Commerce in ’96, effectively cutting Congress out of the approval process governing such exports. Apparently, the administration knew the move would raise eyebrows since staffers were warned via e-mail to keep it under wraps.
China eyes California port
But there are other symptoms signaling something amiss with U.S.-Sino policy. On our own shores, an effort is under way to lease California’s Long Beach Harbor Naval Base to the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO), the same Chinese state-run concern caught smuggling illegal AK-47s to arm California’s street gangs.
Despite the growing number of area residents lobbying Congress to prevent COSCO from enjoying increased access to the port, the city of Long Beach and the Clinton administration favor the lucrative lease and job creation arrangement.
These and other national security slips made in the guise of helping the American economy belie the fact that such decisions rarely benefit the public-at-large and more often enrich corporate executives and stockholders.
Money pumped into Clinton and DNC campaign coffers may better explain the unusual sway held over the administration by Loral’s Chairman Bernard Schwartz and China’s People’s Liberation Army. While Chinese gunrunners, munitions company representatives and other unsavory characters checkered the exclusive White House guest list during the ’96 presidential campaign, it is every U.S. citizen who will incur the costliest price tag as America’s safety is traded away for economic and political gain.
Secret transfer of Panama Canal
Even the ’77 treaties turning the control of the Panama Canal — a vitally strategic waterway — to Panama have assumed troubling proportions. Although the canal operates under the aegis of the U.S. until ’99, the Panamanian Assembly last year passed a law giving a Hong Kong company with close links to Communist China rights to the Canal and its U.S. military bases. That the U.S. ambassador in Panama and the Panamanian Port Authority didn’t even know about the deal with Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. until after the fact is unsettling.
Several of Panama Law #5’s provisions are said to conflict with those of the ’77 treaties signed by former President Jimmy Carter. Although the Justice Department learned of China’s movement toward the Canal in ’96 — even before the secret Panamanian law was passed — it has remained unresponsive. Hutchison Whampoa will essentially control the movement of all ships in the region, yet the State Department and U.S. Embassy view the entity as any other business investment group.
Veteran military officials monitoring the area can’t fathom why the administration refuses to see that Communist China will dominate the canal that the U.S. should never have relinquished in the first place.
China calls U.S. “Paper Tiger”
To American businesses eager to grow profits in new and less competitive territory, China’s a tempting market. But it’s foolish to believe that China — the world’s third largest nuclear power with a growing economy expected to surpass that of the U.S. in the coming century — is willing to serve as an up-front and equal partner. The trading situation is already tipped in favor of China with its 35-40 percent tariff on all U.S. exports. America’s deficits from this trade imbalance are as huge as the surpluses China rakes in now that the U.S. is its biggest trading partner.
China also mandates that foreign companies seeking trade deals transfer high-level manufacturing technology to China and teach a Chinese workforce to manufacture certain components, which they can do more cheaply than the U.S.
What does China do with the fruits of American trade and technology? It bolsters its military capabilities. Meanwhile, U.S. military and defense spending continues to shrink and there is no national missile defense system in place.
China has taken note of America’s growing impotency, openly accessing the U.S. as a military “paper tiger.”
Even as it violates trade treaties and bullies Taiwan, Tibet and mainland Catholics with little, if any, repercussions, China maintains the upper hand in the U.S.-Sino trade relationship.
Rather than rankle the Asian power after it fired missiles off the coast of Taiwan two years ago, the Clinton administration kowtowed to the business lobby and tried to appease China with yet another technology transfer two months after the incident.
Since we continue to grant China most-favored-nation status despite their missteps, is it any wonder that China views America as a nation without resolve?
In ’96, when China exported nuclear technology to Pakistan and Iran to the consternation of Congress and the Pentagon, we imposed no sanctions. Earlier this year, as the President was certifying China’s nonproliferation adherence to clear the way for the export of more missile and space technology, he discovered that China was negotiating again with Iran.
Yet, China’s subsequent promises to stop providing sensitive technology to Iran are as vapid as our concerns over China’s human rights abuses. Despite an atrocious record, we continue to ply China with capitalism in the vain hope that it will reform its communist ideology and human rights transgressions. But the Chinese learned some time ago that lucrative trade deals and campaign contributions mute such issues, and our human rights concerns amount to “feel good” talk for consumption by the American and Asian-American public.
America the sleeping giant
Given our liberal policy toward China, it behooves Congress and the Justice Department to determine if corporate greed and China’s hunger for power influenced President Clinton to compromise our national security.
We also must look closely at the potent corporate lobby — including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, among other heavyweights — representing the American subsidiaries of Chinese companies to ascertain what safeguards, if any, are needed to prevent additional security breaches.
Clinton apologists defending a pro-business policy toward China argue that European countries would gladly sell high technology to China if America didn’t do so. Yet, such sentiments only add credence to the observation by Karl Marx that politicians merely front for economic rulers.
What President Clinton and others overlook is that China hasn’t accepted capitalism as a democratic force. With little overt interest in democracy, China treats capitalism as a means to an end to strengthen its military, not empower its people. The only people empowered by China is the People’s Liberation Army.
Just as a robust economy leads the general public to almost blindly tolerate charges of wrongdoing at the White House, a pristine and promising market drives Loral and other corporations to strike deals with Red China. When economic factors lull a nation into a dangerous complacency where it fails to recognize its enemies, then it’s that much closer to fulfilling Lenin’s prophecy. Capitalism and democracy are great equalizers, but we would do well to remember that so, too, are weapons of mass destruction.
Donna Lee Nardo is a freelance business writer.
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