Since 1997, there has been a number of enquiries
in the US by Congressional committees, the General Accounting Office (GAO) and individual
Government departments into allegations of clandestine acquisition of sensitive technology
by China in the US through means such as secret diversion of dual-use technology and
equipment for military purposes and espionage. These reports have highlighted the modus
operandi (MO) of the Chinese and the damages to US national security therefrom.
The most recent of these enquiry reports submitted to President
Bill Clinton, with an edited version released to the public , by a bipartisan House Select
Committee headed by Republican Representative Christopher Cox has evoked mixed reactions
in the US. While some analysts have welcomed the report for drawing attention to the
already-suffered and the likely future damages to national security due to the hitherto
under-stated Chinese activities, others have criticised the report for overstating its
case against Chinese espionage and for trying to create a public scare through a
projection of many worst-case scenarios, based more on conjectures than on credible
evidence.
To understand the problem in its proper perspective, one has to
analyse China's intelligence structure insofar as it relates to clandestine technology
acquisition, the MO followed and the background to the recently enhanced US concerns in
this regard.
CHINA'S CLANDESTINE TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION STRUCTURE
Till April, 1998, at the top of the structure was the Commission
of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, known as the COSTIND. The
COSTIND was responsible for supervision over all industries producing military equipment,
fully or partly, and research and development (R&D) with regard to military equipment.
As the agency responsible for weapons R & D, it not only
supervised the work of the defence-related research establishments, but also set tasks for
the acquisition of technology abroad by the intelligence community and monitored their
implementation. The civilian agencies responsible for weapons production and R & D as
well as the PLA were equally represented on the COSTIND.
The April, 1998, session of the National People's Congress (NPC),
which designated Mr.Zhu Rongji as the Prime Minister, approved a re-organisation of this
apex body. Under this plan, the COSTIND was converted into a purely civilian body with no
PLA representation under the changed name the State Commission of Science, Technology and
Industry for National Defence, now referred to as the SCOSTIND.Mr. Liu Jibin, a former
Vice-Minister for Finance, who had worked for some years in the defence industries, was
promoted as the Minister in charge of the SCOSTIND.
At the same time, a new department called the General Armaments
Department (GAD) was created within the PLA. The GAD was made responsible for supervising
the work of all industries exclusively producing military equipment and R & D in
respect of military equipment. The SCOSTIND was given the task of supervising all
industries producing equipment for military as well as civilian use and R & D
connected therewith.
Thus, since April, 1998, the SCOSTIND and the GAD jointly task
the intelligence community for the clandestine acquisition of technology---the GAD in
respect of purely military technology and the SCOSTIND in respect of dual-use technology.
The Chinese intelligence community consists of the Ministry for
Public Security (MPS), the Ministry for State Security (MSS) and the Second and Third
Bureaus of the General Staff Department (GSD) of the PLA.
Till 1983, the MPS was responsible for internal security and
counter-espionage and an organisation called the Central Investigation Department (CID)
for external intelligence and security. In June,1983, the NPC re-designated the CID as the
MSS and merged with it the counter-espionage division of the MPS. Mr.Deng Xiao-ping also
ordered that the MSS should, in future, send its officers abroad more under non-diplomatic
covers such as journalists, academics, scientists, businessmen and business executives
than under diplomatic covers as the CID was doing. Mr.Deng wanted the MSS to take
advantage of the new opportunities created by the opening-up of China for diversifying its
methods of collecting intelligence.
The MSS was divided into 12 Bureaus, of which three were made
exclusively responsible for science & technology. The Fourth Bureau was made
responsible for R & D with regard to the gadgetry required by the MSS officers for
their operations; the Tenth Bureau was given the task of clandestine acquisition of
scientific and technological information; and the Eleventh Bureau was allotted the task of
computer security inside the MSS and other Government departments and clandestine
collection of information relating to information technology.
The Second Bureau of the GSD is responsible for military
intelligence through human sources and the Third Bureau for technical intelligence,
through monitoring of wireless and telephone communications, aerial surveillance and other
means.
The April, 1998, NPC session designated Mr.Jia Chunwang, who was
the Minister for State Security from 1985, as the Minister for Public Security in
replacement of Mr.Tao Siju and appointed Mr.Xu Yongyue as the new Minister for State
Security.
The reasons for the replacement of Mr.Tao Siju are not known. As
the Minister responsible for external intelligence for 13 years, Mr. Jia had, on the one
hand, established a network of liaison relationships with the external intelligence
agencies of many countries, including the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and, on
the other, strengthened the MSS's capability for the clandestine acquisition of scientific
and technological information abroad.
The background of Mr.Xu, the new head of the external
intelligence set-up, is not yet known. Till 1985, China followed the tradition of
appointing career intelligence officers as the heads of the MPS and the MSS. In
1985,Mr.Deng broke with this tradition and brought in Mr.Jia, a bureaucrat with no
exposure to intelligence work, to head the MSS. It is, therefore, difficult to say whether
Mr.Xu is a career intelligence officer or has been inducted from outside the intelligence
community.
The Second Bureau of the GSD is headed by Maj.Gen. Ji Shengde.
The name of the head of the Third Bureau of the GSD is not known.
One of the members of the Standing Committee of the Politbureau
of the Chinese Communist Party co-ordinates the work of all the agencies of the
intelligence community, civilian as well as military. Mr.Qiao Shi, former Chairman of the
NPC, used to be the co-ordinator for nearly two decades. Due to differences with President
Jiang Zemin, he was eased out of his party functions at the Party Congress of 1997 and
replaced as the NPC Chairman by Mr. Li Peng, in April, 1998.
It is not yet known who now acts as the co-ordinator of the
intelligence community. There are, however, unconfirmed indications that this job has now
been entrusted to Mr.Hu Jintao, a Jiang Zemin loyalist, who was elected to the Politbureau
Standing Committee by the 1997 Party congress and also subsequently designated as the
Vice-President of China. He started his career as a hydraulic engineer and served for some
years as the head of the Communist Youth League. He was the most visible and vocal member
of the leadership when Beijing was recently rocked by anti-US riots over the NATO bombing
of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. It was he and not Mr.Jiang or Mr.Zhu, who made a
televised broadcast to the nation on the occasion.
THE MODUS OPERANDI
Like the KGB, the Committee of State Security of the erstwhile
USSR, and the newly-created (in 1993) Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian
Federation, the Chinese external intelligence agency relies considerably on non-diplomatic
covers for intelligence collection abroad.
Since the erstwhile USSR did not have an overseas Russian
Diaspora, the KGB's non-diplomatic covers were confined to the professions of journalism,
academics and the staff of state-owned enterprises having overseas linkages, such as the
Aeroflot, the Intourist etc. However, the fact that the overwhelming number of the
communist parties of the world, particularly in Western countries, were pro-Moscow and
that there was considerable ideological sympathy for Moscow even amongst non-Communist
leftist circles, particularly amongst the Western elite, provided the KGB with a reservoir
of talents for exploitation for the collection of scientific and technological
intelligence.
The majority of the spies, who helped the KGB in the clandestine
acquisition of technology abroad, were native-born citizens of the country from which
intelligence was collected. They worked for the KGB either due to ideological affinity or
for money or under pressure.
China did not have a similar reservoir of ideologically
pro-Beijing talents in the US and other Western countries. But, it had at its disposal a
vast Diaspora of overseas Chinese who were prepared to help the MSS in the clandestine
acquisition of technology either out of a feeling of patriotism or for money or under
pressure exercised through their relatives still living in China. The role of the overseas
Chinese community in helping the MSS is as significant as that of the overseas Jewish
community in helping the MOSSAD, the Israeli external intelligence organisation.
The ethnic Asians constitute 4 per cent of the US population, but
scientists belonging to the ethnic Asian communities occupy 10 per cent of the posts in
various research establishments in sensitive fields. Amongst these, ethnic Chinese
scientists constitute the largest single group. These are the permanent employees of these
research establishments and this number does not include the large number of scientists
from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong who go to the US periodically on visiting Fellowships.
The significant role played by the ethnic Chinese citizens or
permanent residents of the US in helping the MSS in the clandestine acquisition of
technology would be evident from the following: Only in one of the reported important
cases of Chinese technological espionage in the US since 1949 was the suspect a White
American citizen, with ideological affinity to Beijing. In all other cases, the suspects
were US citizens or permanent residents of Chinese origin. In a majority of the cases, the
suspects had migrated to the US from Taiwan and not from the mainland. The MSS's past
preference for recruits from amongst the Chinese of Taiwanese origin could be attributed
to the fact that the migrants from Taiwan did not evoke the same distrust in the US as
migrants from the mainland and that, consequently, the FBI surveillance on them was not as
strict as it was on mainland Chinese.
Even though there was no Chinese business community in the
mainland before 1979, the then CID was able to recruit talents from the overseas Chinese
business communities of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao and the South-East Asian countries,
particularly Indonesia and Thailand. After the opening-up of China in 1979, a Chinese
business community has come up and a large number of private companies have come into
existence.
While many of these companies are genuinely private in the sense
of being owned by private entrepreneurs, there are others which are private in name and
registration, but, in reality, have been floated by different Government departments,
including the PLA, to act as joint venture partners of foreign investors. This is
particularly so in sensitive fields like telecommunications, aerospace industries,
broadcasting and telecasting and Internet Service Providers, where, in the Chinese
perception, unmonitored foreign presence could damage national security.
All the so-called private firms, which are joint venture partners
of foreign companies for providing cellular phone and paging services, are controlled by
the PLA. Similarly, the mainland company (Today's Asia), which is a partner of Mr.Rupert
Murdoch's Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV, is allegedly controlled by the PLA.
In 1993, SCM/Brooks, a US company specialising in communications
technology, formed a joint venture with an ostensibly private Chinese company called the
Galaxy New Technology under the name Hua Mei and obtained the clearance of the Clinton
Administration for the transfer of its technology to the jointly-owned firm in China. It
transpired in 1996 that the Galaxy had actually been floated by the PLA and that Mr.Deng
Changru, who was appointed by the Galaxy as its President in December,1995, was a
telecommunications officer of the PLA with the rank of a Colonel. He had allegedly served
for some years in the Third Bureau of the GSD responsible for technical intelligence.
There have been many other such instances of ostensibly private
companies floated by the PLA, the Second Bureau of the GSD and the MSS. Among companies
which are strongly suspected to have been floated by the Chinese intelligence community
are the Anran Company, reportedly owned 100 per cent by the MSS, and the China Resources
(Holdings), Beijing, and the China Resources Enterprises, Hong Kong, reportedly jointly
controlled by the MSS and the Second Bureau of the GSD.
The most active state-owned company of China is the China
International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC). It has two branches in Hong Kong
called CITIC, Hong Kong, 100 per cent owned by it, and CITIC,Pacific, owned 45 per cent by
CITIC, Hong Kong, with the other shares held by Hong Kong businessmen.
The CITIC, Beijing, and the Polytechnologies, a company of the
PLA, are both headed by Mr. Wang Jun, son of the late Mr.Wang Zhen, former Vice-President
of China. Mr.Wang Jun is a former naval officer. As head of the Polytechnologies, he works
under Mr.He Ping, a son-in-law of the late Mr.Deng Xiaoping, who is the head of a
conglomerate called the China Poly Group. Mr.He Ping, who was also in the PLA, had worked
for some years as a Service Attaché in the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
Ms.Liu Chao-ying, daughter of Gen. Liu Huaqing, who was senior
Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission, has come under media scrutiny in the US
in connection with the enquiries into the activities of Chinese companies. She was a Major
in the PLA before she went to the US.
There has been a proliferation of Chinese companies in the US
since 1990. The Cox Committee estimates the number of such companies at
3,000.Investigations into the working of these companies done by various non-governmental
and governmental agencies since 1992 have brought out that:
----Many of these companies do not have any genuine business
activity. Often, they are just letterhead companies registered and opened for the
collection of technological information.
----Many of these companies have common staff, common office
accommodation and even common telephones.
----The heads of many of them are ex-PLA officers or other
bureaucrats.
President Jiang Zemin's order of last year regarding the removal
of the PLA from business activity is unlikely to affect companies floated by the PLA and
the intelligence community for intelligence collection. The "China Daily Business
Weekly" of March 21 has reported that "some sectors of a special nature"
would be exempted from the purview of Mr.Jiang's order.
THE BACKGROUND TO THE ENHANCED US CONCERNS
Mr.William Perry, who was Defence Secretary in the first Clinton
administration, became an ardent advocate of what he called co-operation with China in the
field of defence conversion. By this, he meant persuading China to convert its defence
industries to exclusively civilian use and helping it to reduce the PLA's presence in
those sectors of the economy and administration where responsibilities should lie in
civilian and not military hands.
For this purpose, he persuaded Beijing to agree to the formation
of an US-China Joint Defence Conversion Commission with representatives of the Pentagon
and the COSTIND. Justifying his proposal, he said in 1995 that "by engaging the PLA
directly, we can help promote more openness in the Chinese national security apparatus,
including military institutions."
The first project undertaken by the Commission was "to help
China integrate the management of its military and civilian air-traffic control systems
and modernise the system to improve flight safety in China."
Following a controversy in 1996 over the revelation that the
Galaxy New Technology Company, a joint venture partner of the Hua Mei company, was
actually controlled by the PLA, there was media spotlight on the role of Mr.Perry in
getting clearance for the transfer of modern US communications technology to the PLA under
the cover of this joint venture.
This led to criticism of the very idea of a joint Defence
Conversion Commission in association with a Chinese entity involved in the clandestine
acquisition of technology in the US. The critics contended that the COSTIND was exploiting
this Commission to soften US bureaucratic resistance to the transfer of modern technology
to China.
This criticism was intensified following a discovery in 1996 that
China had secretly transferred to the Nanchang Aircraft Manufacturing Factory in Jiangxi,
which manufactures A-5 strike aircraft, Silkworm missiles, jet trainers and crop-spraying
planes, six second-hand machine tools that it had bought from McDonnel Douglas in
September,1994, ostensibly for a new plant meant to produce civilian aircraft.
There were certain other developments in 1996 and 1997, which led
to criticism that in its keenness for pampering business interests, the Clinton
Administration was damaging national security interests.
The Clinton Administration, allegedly under pressure from the
aerospace and telecommunications lobbies, removed commercial communications satellites
from the munition list and transferred the licensing powers with regard to such satellites
from the State Department to the Commerce Department. (This power has since been
transferred back to the State Department this year).
The decision followed complaints from these lobbies that the
State Department and the Pentagon had an unnecessarily restrictive attitude while dealing
with applications for licence from US companies for having their communications satellites
launched by China's Long March rockets.
Under the economic sanctions imposed against China by the Bush
Administration after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, which are still in force,
export of commercial communications satellites to China for being launched by Chinese
rockets is banned. However, the Congress has vested the President with powers to issue
waivers if considered necessary in national interest.
President Bush issued nine such waivers in three years. This was
one of the reasons why Mr.Clinton, during the presidential campaign of 1992, accused
Mr.Bush of mollycoddling Beijing. Mr.Clinton's attitude changed after coming to office and
he himself issued 11 waivers in five years.
Both the Administrations justified the liberal issue of waivers
as meant to be incentives to Beijing to exercise voluntary restraint on the export of
missiles and related technology to other countries and to ultimately adhere fully to the
Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).
The aerospace and telecommunications lobbies justified their
demand for the easing of restrictions on the launching of their satellites on Chinese
rockets by pointing out that it cost only 50 per cent of what it would cost if they were
to get them launched on West European or Russian rockets.
Some advocates of a more liberal regime also underlined the
opportunities such launchings provided to the scientific experts of the US intelligence
community to visit Chinese space establishments and launching sites under the cover of the
executives of the US companies, interact with Chinese scientists and identify points of
strength and weaknesses of Chinese rockets and the direction of their R & D thrust.
In 1997, allegations were made in the media that the Democratic
Party and Mr. Clinton himself had been in receipt of hefty campaign contributions not only
from US aerospace companies, but also from a PLA-owned aerospace conglomerate of China,
which had been the beneficiaries of the removal of commercial satellites from the
munitions list and of the liberal issue of waivers by Mr. Clinton.
Between 1994 and 1996, the Long March rockets of China went
through a bad patch with a failure rate of 25 per cent. Amongst the US companies affected
by these failures were the Hughes Space & Communications in 1995 and the Loral Space
& Communications in 1996.
Hughes' experts, who investigated the 1995 failure, reportedly
identified the causes as inaccurate mathematical formulae used by the Chinese for
assessing the impact of atmospheric conditions on the launching, structural weaknesses in
the rivets used to attach the satellites to the rockets and the shape of the nose-cone
which caused instability during the launchings. Without the knowledge of the Clinton
Administration, the company allegedly shared these findings with the Chinese authorities.
Similarly, the Loral Company allegedly shared with the Chinese,
without the permission of the administration, an enquiry report submitted by a team, which
had investigated the failure of the 1996 launch.
The repeated failures between 1994 and 1996 of the Long March
rockets led to a steep increase in the insurance premia for commercial satellites launched
on Chinese rockets. What the Hughes and the Loral were gaining as a result of the
attractive discount rates for launchings offered by the Chinese was neutralised by the
increase in insurance premium rates and the losses due to the delayed commissioning of the
satellites.
This made the American companies as anxious as the Chinese to
improve the performance of the Long March rockets and it was alleged that the Hughes and
the Loral not only shared their findings on the failures with the Chinese, but also gave
them advice as to how to remove the defects. It was contended that, as a result, the
performance of the Long March rockets has significantly improved since then.
The Congressional opponents of space co-operation with China saw
a nexus between the campaign contributions by the aerospace companies, the liberal issue
of waivers and the failure of the Clinton Administration to take punitive action against
the Hughes and the Loral for the breach of security rules and claimed that these two
companies, by their action, had not only helped China in improving the performance of its
Long March rockets, but would have also enabled it to improve the accuracy of its missiles
directed at the US. It was this, which led to the launching of the Cox Committee enquiry.
NUCLEAR ESPIONAGE
A CIA official, who testified before the Cox Committee,
reportedly volunteered the information that in 1995 a Chinese, who claimed to have access
to secret intelligence regarding China's nuclear arsenal, initiated contacts with a CIA
official (the place was not mentioned, but it is believed to be Taiwan) and offered to
work for the CIA. In support of his claim of access, he reportedly gave to the CIA
official some documents containing data about nuclear weapons under development by China.
One of these documents dated 1988 contained data about a
miniaturised nuclear weapon capable of being launched from a submarine and the weapon as
described in the document closely resembled a miniaturised US warhead called W-88. Even
earlier, US scientists had noticed that a miniaturised warhead being tested by the Chinese
had qualities similar to those of W-88. The document given by the Chinese walk-in
strengthened their suspicions of Chinese espionage in US nuclear establishments.
Surprisingly, the Chinese walk-in source did not meet the CIA
official again, thereby giving rise to a suspicion that he might have been a double agent
sent by the MSS, but no explanation has been forthcoming as to why the MSS should want the
CIA to know that it has had access to US nuclear secrets.
A FBI enquiry was ordered into the suspected theft of W-88
designs by the MSS. The suspicion zeroed in on an American scientist of Taiwanese origin
(Wen Ho Lee), working in a division of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, which
deals with miniaturisation of nuclear weapons.
From the US media allegations, the following picture emerges:
Mrs.Wen Ho Lee, also of Chinese origin, was working in the Administration section of the
Laboratory. She used to be attached as Liaison Officer to delegations of foreign
scientists visiting the Laboratory.
Through her, Chinese delegations visiting the laboratory
established contacts with her husband and other scientists of Chinese origin.
In 1988, Mr.Wen Ho Lee received, through his laboratory, an
invitation to present a paper on a non-sensitive subject at a seminar organised by a Hong
Kong organisation. The Laboratory permitted him to do so.
He was allegedly contacted by the Chinese at Hong Kong and taken
secretly to Beijing for debriefing. He did not take the permission of the Laboratory for
going to Beijing. Nor did he keep it informed after his return to New Mexico.
Though Mr.Wen denied any wrong-doing, the FBI wanted to keep his
telephone and computer under watch, but its request for permission to do so was rejected
by the Attorney-General on grounds of lack of evidence to suspect him.
Only after the matter came up before the Cox Committee and
appeared in the media was the FBI permitted to examine his computer. They reportedly found
that Mr.Wen had, without permission, transferred a lot of classified data from other
computers to his. He has been sacked by the Laboratory on charges of unauthorised and
unreported contacts with foreigners and breaches of computer security rules. He has not
yet been charged with espionage for want of adequate evidence.
It has been reported that the testimonies collected by the Cox
Committee and other agencies had indicated the possibility of Chinese theft of
technologies relating to five other warheads, submarine detection and neutron bombs. The
submarine detection technology and inputs regarding the use of laser in neutron bombs were
alleged to have been provided to the Chinese by Mr.Peter Lee, an ethnic Chinese scientist
of Taiwanese origin, reportedly working in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of
California. He allegedly gave the laser inputs to the Chinese during a visit to Beijing in
1985 and the submarine detection inputs during another visit to Beijing in 1997.
However, action has been taken against him only on charges of
submitting incomplete reports about his visits to Beijing and giving the Chinese the laser
technology. According to the "International Herald Tribune" (May 11,1999), no
action is being taken in respect of the submarine detection technology due to lack of
adequate evidence. It is being speculated that the real reason is that the US Navy does
not want to admit in court that a new technology for submarine detection has been
developed.
CONCLUSIONS
The recent allegations regarding the clandestine acquisition of
sensitive technologies by China in the US broadly related to five fields--nuclear
weaponisation, improvement of the performance of their space rockets and missiles,
submarine detection techniques, improvement of the PLA's telecommunications capability and
super computers.
Of these, only the reported Chinese success in the clandestine
acquisition of nuclear weaponisation and submarine detection technologies was the result
of classic espionage operations.
The acquisition by the Chinese of technological inputs for the
improvement of the performance of their space rockets and, hence, supposedly of missiles
and of the PLA's telecommunications capability was the result not so much of Chinese
espionage as of the over-keenness of US business companies to expand their business
interests in China even by secretly providing the Chinese with technological inputs
without the knowledge of the US Administration. The clandestine nature of these
transactions came more from the American than from the Chinese side.
There was nothing clandestine about the reported Chinese purchase
of about 600 sophisticated computers in the US. The Clinton Administration had liberalised
the rules regarding the export of computers and the Chinese took advantage of this.
Certain other observations would be in order.
First, the greater tolerance of clandestine Chinese acquisition
activities by the Clinton Administration and of the repeated breaches of security rules by
US business companies with expanding interests in China. This is in marked contrast to the
severe action which the pre-1991 US Administrations used to take against similar
clandestine acquisitions by the USSR and against US companies obliging the Soviets in
violation of security rules.
This tolerance could be attributed partly to the enormous
interests of the US business companies in the expanding Chinese market and partly to
ill-advised policy considerations. The US companies did not have a similar interest in the
Soviet market and do not have a similar interest in the Russian market. The ill-advised
policy considerations arose from naïve assumptions, which have been repeatedly belied,
that such leniency towards China could bring in political dividends in the form of a more
responsible and responsive Chinese regime in matters such as restraints in the export of
nuclear weapons and missile technologies to Iran and Pakistan and political liberalisation
to accompany the economic liberalisation.
Second, the enormous influence which the pro-China business lobby
in the US exercises on public servants not only in the White House and the State, Defence
and Commerce Departments, but also in the US intelligence community. One had seen how the
CIA repeatedly withstood pressure from the White House, the National Security Council and
the State Department to dilute its reports against China in respect of supply of nuclear
weapons and missile technologies and equipment to Pakistan. But, in respect of violation
of security rules by the US companies in their dealings with China, it has been amenable
to external pressure and has had no qualms over diluting its estimate of the gravity of
the damage to the US national security interests.
The recent investigations have brought out that the CIA's station
chief in Beijing had sent a report to his headquarters in Washington forwarding some
allegations that the representative of the Hughes in Beijing had been paying bribes to
Chinese officials in order to get better terms for the satellite launchings. This is an
offence under US laws which prohibit payment of bribes by US companies to promote their
business, but the CIA headquarters never sent the field report to the Attorney-General's
office for investigation.
Third , the way Chinese and US business companies have been
systematically softening former and serving public servants through lucrative consultancy
offers in order to induce a more tolerant attitude towards wrong-doings by these
companies. Amongst those who are alleged to be working as consultants to such companies
are Dr.Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser under President
Nixon, Mr.Al Haig, Secretary of State under President Reagan, and Mr.William Perry and Mr.
Joseph Nye, Defence Secretary and Assistant Defence Secretary respectively in Mr.
Clinton's first Administration. It has even been alleged in sections of the US media that
Mr.Sandy Berger, the present National Security Adviser, had worked as a consultant to one
such firm before he joined Mr. Clinton's first Administration as Deputy National Security
Adviser.
Fourth, the marked contrast between the way the Clinton
Administration has been mollycoddling China despite the repeated violations of US laws by
Chinese entities and the way it has sought to penalise a large number of Indian entities
not due to evidence of any wrong-doing by them but due to unjustified and imaginary fears
that they might indulge in wrong-doing. Only five Chinese companies figure in the USA's
"entities black list" as against dozens of Indian companies.
And, the fifth and the last, China is not the only country, which
indulges in scientific and technological espionage. The USA does it too, as aggressively
as China if not more, through the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology headed by
Mr.Gary Smith, former Director of the Applied Physics Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins
University. Whereas China indulges in espionage to strengthen its technological
capability, the CIA's technological wizards do it in order to deny other countries access
to modern technologies and thus keep them in a state of technological servitude to the US.
