Chinese Spied for Decades
Late in May the Clinton administration agreed to release a congressional report on Chinese espionage in the United States—and on its own failure to investigate some major incidents at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico.
The report described a decades-long pattern of massive Chinese attempts—many quite successful—to obtain U.S. secrets, such as the design techniques for advanced nuclear warheads and missile reentry vehicles. The Chinese also may have obtained information on some nonnuclear weapons technology under development at Los Alamos, such as a method of detecting submerged submarines by radar observation of the wakes they leave at the ocean's surface. Another compromised technology, also in the embryonic stage, is the electromagnetic gun (rail gun), on which work began as part of the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative program.
In theory, an electric gun offers muzzle velocities far greater than anything attainable by a conventional gun. Whether or not the nonnuclear technologies ultimately are successful, the bombs developed by Los Alamos certainly work. So do the reentry vehicles that carry them. Current Chinese ballistic missiles are relatively clumsy. Given U.S.-style lightweight warheads, a next generation missile could be mobile, thus quite difficult to destroy preemptively. Also, the Chinese probably obtained details of the design of the neutron bomb, which apparently interests China because it can be used even on their own soil (it does not damage buildings or other fixed assets, and it does not kill those sheltering under layers of earth; it is therefore an ideal weapon for use against troops in the open or in armored vehicles). In a wider sense, there seems to have been no U.S. military technology the Chinese failed to target, though we cannot yet know how successful they were. Aegis is a case in point.
Overall, the damage was said to have been worse than that inflicted by the famous Soviet atomic bomb spy rings of World War II, since the Soviets obtained only the design of a specific weapon (the plutonium bomb dropped on Hiroshima) and methods for its production. By way of contrast, the Chinese obtained the computer programs (codes) Los Alamos uses to simulate what happens inside an exploding nuclear warhead, as well as the computerized descriptions of all existing U.S. nuclear weapons (which are used by the program to maintain these weapons without actual tests). The software is exactly what a designer of an advanced weapon would need, and softened U.S. export rules made it possible for the Chinese to buy 600 supercomputers on which to run that software. Thus, at least in theory, the Chinese have transformed their weapons-development capability in a very few years.
Clearly, the Chinese eventually would catch up with current U.S. technology-but at a very high cost, and over decades. Now they are in a much better position. The money that otherwise might have gone into testing and theoretical bomb development can be spent instead on delivery systems-which also have benefited, apparently, from lax U.S. export controls. Moreover, it seems clear that the Chinese favor exports of strategic weaponry to states hostile to the United States, such as Iran, at least partly in hopes of restraining the United States-which they now regard as a threat. The basic question raised by the report is whether the current administration's policy of "engagement" really meant appeasement of an increasingly aggressive China, which has little or no interest in a cooperative partnership with the United States. Clearly, at one time there was a real U.S. interest in cooperation, because during the latter part of the Cold War China was a counterbalance to the Soviets, absorbing much of their strength (the Chinese saw the United States in a similar light, limiting the Soviet threat they faced). Now the main U.S. interest seems to be commercial and China provides a market with vast potential. The question, then, is whether the potential of that market blinded many U.S. companies and the U.S. administration itself to the likelihood that a stronger China would be a major strategic threat.
The comparison to the Soviet spy ring is apt. After 1945 Americans assumed the Soviets eventually would get the atomic bomb, but the usual estimate was that it would take them at least a decade. During that decade the United States would enjoy the fruits of its own bomb program; it could act as a superpower without bankrupting itself by maintaining large conventional forces. Given the time thus bought, it might be possible to restore the Western Europeans to the point at which they could hold off the Soviets. The ideas were reasonable—but espionage solved the Soviets' problem and cut short the U.S. nuclear monopoly.
Our current superpower status rests in large part on the technological investments we made during the Cold War. In the aftermath, we drastically cut not only our forces but also their research-and-development base. Our logic was that we were so far ahead that we had bought a breathing space, during which we could rebuild a U.S. economy badly damaged by the sacrifices entailed by the Cold War. The effect of Chinese espionage—and, perhaps, of governmental fecklessness—has quite possibly been to cut short our superpower status, much the way Soviet espionage cut our nuclear monopoly in 1949.
Certainly Josef Stalin made good use of the end of the U.S. monopoly. In June 1950, he allowed his minion, Kim II Sung, to invade South Korea; the Cold War seemed about to turn very hot. Until that time, Stalin was acutely aware that military adventures were too dangerous to touch. Will the fruits of espionage encourage the Chinese to imagine that they can take chances, such as attacking Taiwan, without fear of U.S. intervention, because their growing arsenal will deter us?
U.S. Bombs Hit Chinese Embassy
The U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade early in May carried interesting military and political implications. It was obvious from the first, to everyone but the Chinese government, that the attack had been a mistake. It was particularly unfortunate that so much publicity had been given to the precision of modern U.S. weapons, because that made it seem that any attack had been deliberate. The weapons in question were three Joint Direct-Attack Munitions (JDAMs) dropped by a B-2 during a 31-hour round-trip flight from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri. These bombs are guided by navigational data obtained from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites; the pilot simply goes to a designated release point and lets go. The bombs apparently are programmed before takeoff.
In most such cases, credit (or blame for mistakes) goes to the shooter, who in this case was the pilot of the B-2. In this case, however, the shooter has little or no control over the aim points of GPS-guided weapons like JDAM (or, for that matter, current versions of Tomahawk). Aiming really is done at a much higher level.
It now seems that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts had mistaken the position of the Yugoslav Arms Development Agency, which they wanted to destroy. They apparently had no direct way of measuring its GPS coordinates (i.e., by having someone on the ground simply walk in front of the building holding a GPS receiver). They did know its street address, and apparently they deduced GPS coordinates from aerial or satellite photographs. Their error seems to have been to identify the address with the wrong building, the Chinese Embassy, which is several blocks away from the arms agency.
Both are about the same size, and they might not have been easy to distinguish from aerial or satellite photographs. Normally the presence of an embassy would deter targeters from attacking any nearby building, for fear of hitting it with near misses. That exclusion is enforced by reference to maps intended to show the locations of the embassies (and other protected buildings) in Belgrade. Unfortunately, the CIA targeters were working, it has been said, from old maps, in which the embassy was in another part of the city (it moved four years ago). The combination of misinterpreted photographs and obsolete maps proved deadly.
The attack on the embassy can be read as a demonstration of flaws in the new concepts of war typified by Joint Vision 2010 and by network-centric warfare. In each, it is presumed that targeters far from the combat zone enjoy better information than those closer to the action, because they have access to "national" sensors such as those on board satellites. They can, therefore, choose and designate targets more precisely.
Given the miracle of GPS navigation, those target designations can be understood and used by those closer to the targets.
There can be no question but that the distant targeters sometimes know a great deal more than those on the spot. They can meld satellite photographs with satellite-derived signals intelligence, as well as with human intelligence collected and collated over time. On the other hand, actual targeting (other than strategic nuclear targeting) is a relatively new role for intelligence agencies based in the United States. In the past, when they identified strategic targets in the Soviet Union, accuracy was never really tested. Had a major nuclear war broken out, a few errors in target location would have meant little amidst the chaos of massive nuclear strikes. The targeters did specify street addresses, but a megaton bomb destroys whole neighborhoods, and an error of a few blocks would not have mattered.
The post-Cold War (and, we can hope, post-nuclear) age is a different proposition. Targets are hit one by one, and accuracy is tested almost hourly. Last year, U.S. Tomahawks, ultimately targeted by the same agency that aimed the bombs at the Chinese embassy, destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan.
At first the plant was said to be a center for producing precursor chemicals to make nerve gas. A few days later, however, there were sheepish admissions that the information had been grossly incomplete; the attack had been a terrible mistake. Someone in Washington had been far too eager to add two and two, and had come up with five.
In the case of the Chinese embassy, apparently most people in Belgrade were well aware of the locations not only of the embassy but also of the arms agency. The agency, after all, was not a secret operation; its building was clearly marked. One can only speculate that whoever did the targeting in the United States was unaware of such common knowledge; it seems that the satellite sensors and the reference books (which gave the arms agency's address) sufficed. As for maps, before the current campaign Yugoslavia was probably not a very high priority for reference collection. Someone failed to check-or, perhaps, new maps simply have not been printed, given the low state of the Serbian economy over the past few years. Mistakes happen in all wars, and the practice of moving decisions away from the combat zone may make them happen more often.
If the publicity is correct, this war has seen many fewer mistakes than others. That makes a spectacular mistake like the embassy attack particularly noticeable.
We do not know how many other mistakes there have been, because in most cases targeting errors have few—or no—public consequences. When a building is hit, generally it is not obvious that the bombs or missiles should have gone somewhere else. The Chinese embassy was a glaring exception, and perhaps the attack ought to be the occasion for a general review of how well the remote targeting envisaged in our current doctrines really works. It is, incidentally, quite clear that from a technical point of view the bombs worked exactly as advertised: they hit their aim points. The seeds of the disaster lay in the choice of aim points.
Now for the political end of the story—the massive Chinese reaction. The Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations demanded justice, and rejected any attempt to whitewash what had happened by calling it what it clearly was, a tragic error.
In Beijing, the Chinese government bused in protesters, who besieged and damaged the American and British embassies. Reportedly, the Chinese media had been whipping up emotions for weeks, emphasizing the plight of the Serbians and pointedly omitting any reference to the genocide those Serbians were practicing against the Kosovars. To anyone listening to Chinese media, NATO was engaging in pointless aggression in Kosovo.
In this sense, the tragic U.S. attack on the embassy was a valuable opportunity for the Chinese government to help make its case public.
It has been less widely reported that—early in May, well before the bombing—the Chinese government cracked down on satellite televisions. Unauthorized satellite reception had been formally illegal since 1993, but the law had been flouted widely.
Now it has been reprinted, and illegal satellite dishes and decoders have been seized. The crackdown may be even more significant than it appears because, in the past, the Chinese military has resisted limits on such television on the grounds that its own production and sale of satellite receivers have been so profitable. The Chinese government may now feel strong enough to overcome any such objections. Alternatively, it may feel so threatened by free access to foreign sources of news that the internal stress of a conflict with the army is worth facing.
The crackdown included curtailment of the Phoenix cable channel, largely owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Mr. Murdoch had sought government favor by avoiding serious news coverage on the cable channel. He had even gone so far as to tone down coverage of China in newspapers he owned in the West, such as The Times of London. His sin may have been to attract many viewers from the stodgier state-run television-or being unable to go along with strident anti-Western propaganda planned for state media.
Western press coverage of the anti-American propaganda and of the riots at the U.S. embassy (and consulates) suggested that by encouraging nationalist rioters the current relatively liberal Chinese government was playing into the hands of its conservative enemies. The government has been pressing economic reforms, and Premier Zhu Rongji offered President Bill Clinton important trade concessions (in return for membership in the World Trade Organization) when he visited the United States earlier this year. Certainly the public face of China, as it presented in the West, shows little in common with the extremely anti-Western views Chinese official media are now displaying.
Our Cold War experience with the Soviets suggests that the current interpretation is naive. At least in the Soviet Union, politics was always tactical, and political alliances within the party were based on personalities, not ideas or policies. The leader of any faction could and did use ideas espoused by his rivals to discredit them, but once they were gone there was no reason not to adopt the same ideas. In Western political systems, in contrast, people support a party or a leader largely out of sympathy with its ideas. If the leader of a party wants to abandon previous policies, he has to accept that many of those same people will leave. In effect, politicians in a democracy live with political inertia or momentum; they cannot maneuver very freely.
In contrast, in a communist system political power is decided by a very small circle at the very top of the party. The mass of the party is disciplined; its members' views have no effect on the decisions made at the top. Thus whoever runs a communist state has much more maneuverability than any democratic counterpart. On the other hand, without some concession to popular views, a communist politician may find it difficult to build the support needed to carry out policies effectively.
Thus it is easy for a communist ruler to present diametrically opposed faces to the outside world and to his own countrymen.
The Soviets did that all the time. They could espouse detente when speaking to Americans, while at the same time encouraging Soviet citizens to greater vigilance against the American enemy. Indeed, the internal calls were a way of building the sort of support the regime needed. Does this sound familiar? Visiting the United States, Premier Zhu Rongji was all smiles and even trade concessions. At home, his military continued to build up the United States as the primary enemy of China.
The internal policy had a valuable by-product. Many Chinese supporters of democracy considered the United States an important inspiration. If they were forced to reject the United States as a mortal enemy, they would also have to reject democracy, or at least anything like the democracy the United States supports. To make the attack particularly effective, the Chinese government described the attack on the Belgrade embassy as a "humiliation." That is a code word. When the Chinese Communists fought the Civil War in the 1940s, their war cry was:
"End the foreign humiliations" symbolized by foreign concessions and even colonies on Chinese soil. Many Chinese were painfully aware of what Westerners had imposed, and many resented the numerous humiliations. Whether or not they liked communism, they certainly wanted China to regain her position as a great country—which meant fighting back against the West. One irony was that some of the worst humiliations had been imposed by the Soviets, who continued to demand concessions once the communists were in power. It is literally impossible for any patriotic Chinese citizen to reject the call to fight against foreign humiliation; the embassy bombing is a very potent symbol.
The Chinese government faces some serious problems. Since the 1980s, it has abandoned the communist party's claim to leadership based on economic wisdom. It needs some way to explain to the mass of the Chinese people why they should continue to tolerate one-party rule, which means little more than accepting enormous corruption. One argument has been that only the unified Communist party can keep China from simply disintegrating. That seems not to have been altogether effective. The alternative, which is far more dangerous to the rest of the world, is to claim that only the party can further Chinese nationalism, that only the party can fight off the permanent threat of humiliation by the West, i.e., by the United States.
Surely senior Chinese Communists have dwelled at length on the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed. They have observed that economic liberalization did not make the Soviet Communist party any more popular. Nationalists became more and more powerful. Because the Soviet party had to work with several different nationalities within the Soviet Union, it could not afford to harness this powerful force; nationalism ultimately was opposed to the party, and it helped destroy the Soviet Union.
In the Chinese case, nationalism is much more easily harnessed.
Although China is a multi-ethnic country, different ethnic groups do not have their own separate governments, equivalent to Soviet republics. Instead, the fiction of a unitary state with a single national group (the Han) is preserved. Han nationalism is therefore an acceptable means of cementing the party's rule.
Note that the party cannot, and need not, base its power on any promise of prosperity for China. Indeed, survivors of East European communist regimes have sometimes observed that communist governments are most stable when their countries are poor. In that case the party enjoys a monopoly of material rewards. There is a very good reason, then, to support the party. In a more prosperous country, there are many ways of becoming rich, and the party is little more than a parasite.
In the wake of Premier Zhu Rongji's visit to the United States, there seems to be a general perception that he wants improved trade so badly that he is willing to make real concessions, and that any deviation from this program is an unwanted concession to his political enemies. The record can be read very differently. Premier Rongji may well imagine that entry into the World Trade Organization would improve his personal prestige, and hence his standing within the Chinese Communist government. He may also calculate that achieving such membership without making major concessions will cement his popularity within the upper echelon of the party. Note that general prosperity likely has little to do with his decisions.
The Chinese government's exploitation of the embassy bombing suggests that the party has decided that nationalism offers by far its best chance of holding onto power—and maintaining power is the only rationale the party really has. It is not clear to what extent nationalist talk—about, for example, gaining control of the South China Sea, or conquering Taiwan necessarily predicts action. However, the concerted Chinese attempt to gain U.S. nuclear secrets and the intense campaign against U.S. ballistic missile defenses suggest that the Chinese government wants a deterrent against U.S. interference with its future moves in both directions. It is interesting that a U.S. administration sensitive to Chinese thinking apparently does not want Taiwan to have a phased-array radar system that might help that island deal with ballistic missile threats mounted by the government on the mainland.