Feeding the Red Dragon
By William F. Jasper The New American, February 15, 1999
The totalitarian thugs who run the gangster state commonly known as the People’s Republic of China have not been exactly coy about their brutish, hostile intentions toward their Asian neighbors. Nor do they bother to go to great pains to conceal their contempt for their American “partners.” They don’t need to, since they have nothing to fear from the Clinton Administration and they see precious little in the U.S. Congress to cause them alarm. Like Khrushchev in the 1960s, the thugs in Beijing are sure they can spit in our eyes and we’ll call it dew. After all, they have been doing precisely that for years. As, for instance, when they splashed missiles down around Taiwan in 1995, and then warned that if America decided to “interfere” in a China-Taiwan conflict, we would find China’s missiles raining down on Los Angeles. That barely veiled threat of nuclear incineration for one of our largest cities raised little more than a fleeting twitter of outrage from officialdom in Washington. An even more brazen threat a few months ago elicited not so much as a peep of protest from the ruling classes on the Potomac. Consider this stunning boast from the Chinese military journal Wide Angle, as reported in the Far Eastern Economic Review in April 1998: “In a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, China’s reconnaissance satellites will know the exact location of U.S. aircraft carriers … as well as Taiwanese destroyers and frigates. If the satellites are used to coordinate a saturated strike by long-range, anti-ship missiles and submarines, neither the U.S. nor Taiwan naval forces could defend themselves.”
Arming the Enemy
Unfortunately, the PRC’s swaggering tyrants have the technology to back up the braggadocio — much of it courtesy of the Clinton White House and the corporate China trade lobby, of course. Over the past year, a cavalcade of stories have begun to reveal the astonishing degree to which the Clinton policy of commercial “engagement” with China has translated into the wholesale transfer of America’s top military technology to our deadly enemies. Loral Space Systems and Hughes Electronics, both headed by major Clinton campaign contributors, played major roles in helping the PRC develop its high-tech war-making capabilities. The details and terrifying potential of these perfidious transactions are still coming to light. Ditto for the supercomputers that Silicon Graphics and other companies have sold to China under a Clinton trade regime that has gutted all security measures. And how might this high-performance computing technology be used? The April 1998 National Security Report of the House National Security Committee lists the following as “just some of the many military applications” toward which our Chinese Communist Party buddies may be directing “our” supercomputers:
Highly advanced stealthy aircraft.
Ballistic missiles and guidance systems.
Improved nuclear weapons.
More deadly torpedo warheads.
Weapons-resistant bunkers and headquarters.
Quieter, more efficient submarines.
Advanced supersonic missiles.
Complex battlefield simulations.
Then there is the McDonnell-Douglas “deal” that provided the Communist militarists of the People’s Liberation Army with an entire turnkey aerospace factory, including super-sophisticated, computer-controlled, five-axis machine tools that have enabled the PLA to make quantum-leap advances in the production of military aircraft and missiles. There are the huge multi-billion dollar telecommunications deals involving Motorola, Loral, Lucent Technologies, Hughes, and others that are providing the PLA with everything it needs for a global, state-of-the-art, military C3 — command, control, communications — system essential for modern, computer-age warfare. All of this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. But we keep steaming toward it with titanic, suicidal abandon. In spite of all the lurid Chinagate revelations proving Red China’s hostile and aggressive intentions toward us and its unswerving commitment to the global Leninist revolution, Congress still doesn’t “get it.”
MFN, Again
Last July “conservative” Republicans lined up once again with Clinton Democrats to reward the butchers of Beijing with most favored nation (MFN) trade status. One hundred and forty-nine Republicans joined with 115 Democrats to provide the 264-166 vote in the House in favor of maintaining the PRC’s ability to flood America’s markets with slave-labor products, raid our technology shelves, and sop up billions of dollars in “free” loans and loan guarantees at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. The list of corporate welfare bums who are enthusiastically helping the Chinese Reds carry out their programs is impressive: Chrysler, Microsoft, Halliburton, Disney, Bechtel, Texaco, General Electric, Boeing, Nike, Hilton, General Motors, Ford, IBM, Federal Express, AT&T, NationsBank, J.P. Morgan, BellSouth, CSX, Ameritech — and on and on. They are assisted in this perfidy by the Business Coalition for U.S.-China Trade, the U.S.-China Educational Foundation, the U.S.-China Business Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Council on Foreign Relations, and others. China is the largest Asian beneficiary of loans and loan guarantees from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, with more than $2 billion worth of U.S. goods purchased by China having been directly subsidized by the taxpayers through Ex-Im over the last year. Billions of dollars more flow to the PRC through the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, all of which are funded with U.S. tax dollars. The November 1998 report of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) informs us that its lending to China in 1998 will probably top out at about $1.5 billion. But that only tells part of the story. The ADB boasts that with this loan funding it “was particularly successful in catalyzing cofinancing” for the Chinese Communists, in the amount of an additional $1.8 billion from commercial and government sources. Of course, every dollar lent to China (at no interest, or low interest) reduces the capital pool and raises the cost of credit available to American companies that want to keep production and jobs here in the United States. Besides which, the likelihood that these vast loans will ever be paid back is remote at best. A shadow of things to come could be seen in China’s announcement on January 11th that there would be no “near term” solution to the $4 billion in bad loans to Guangdong International Trust & Investment Corp. (GITIC). On October 26th, GITIC missed an $8.75 million coupon payment on a U.S. dollar-denominated bond, marking the start of China’s biggest institutional financial failure. GITIC investors may be left holding the bag. Or, if some of the loans were guaranteed by the U.S. government, it will be U.S. taxpayers who are left holding the bag — again. Many other Chinese ventures could follow in GITIC’s footsteps. All of this incredibly foolish largesse on our part, naturally, provides tremendous direct and indirect assistance to the PRC’s military-industrial complex. It is a major reason why thousands of companies run by the PLA have been able to modernize their manufacturing facilities and produce goods at a fraction of the cost that American workers can. China is rolling in cash reserves. In the December 4, 1998 issue of the China Reform Monitor, editor Al Santoli noted that the “current annual U.S. trade deficit with China has surpassed $60 billion” — meaning that the Beijing regime has plenty of pocket change to buy lots of nasty stuff from our other “peace partner,” Russia (which is also a recipient of massive bilateral and multilateral aid). China is Russia’s second-largest arms customer (after India) and already bristles with a huge arsenal of Russian weapons that includes jet-fighters, submarines, anti-aircraft systems and anti-ship cruise missiles.
Economic Warfare
China’s economic warfare against the U.S. is an integral part of its long-range, strategic military and intelligence effort. Every move that enriches China at U.S. expense strengthens the Red Chinese and weakens America — in a number of ways that are generally not perceived. In the past decade, with billions of dollars in grants and subsidized loans and enormous Western technical assistance, China has made astonishing strides in modernizing its electrical power generation, transportation, and manufacturing capabilities. Its new state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, together with its massive use of prison labor (including political and religious prisoners) and the payment of slave-labor wages to its “non-prison” workforce, have enabled the PRC to capture huge segments of the U.S. market. Textiles, steel, clothing, shoes, auto parts, glassware, household goods, furniture, appliances, consumer electronics, hardware, tools, and toys — all once made in the U.S. — are now made in China. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the U.S. shopper to find goods that are not made in China. Besides taking several million U.S. jobs, this huge manufacturing shift has provided China with facilities which either produce items that are important to modern warfare and warfare support, or that could be converted to war production on short notice. The flood of products China daily deluges our ports with also provides Beijing’s strategists with a steady, gigantic transfusion of cash, which it uses to purchase key military goods — and politicians. The intelligence-espionage opportunities offered by increased trade is another bonus China has not failed to exploit to the hilt. Every U.S. company that does business with China — not just those involved in military-related fields — is viewed as a target by China’s secret police, the MSS. And every employee of U.S. companies doing business with China — from the corporate CEO to the low-level clerk — is a target for compromise and recruitment. Likewise, every Chinese company that sets up operations in the U.S. serves a vital intelligence function. Red Chinese companies, whether dummy front corporations or actual businesses engaged in real production and commerce, are subservient arms of the Chinese Communist Party’s central planners in Beijing. They may be assigned to provide cover for spies and agents of influence, smuggle drugs and agents in and technology out, transfer illegal funds to politicians or fifth columnists, acquire state or military secrets, or a multitude of other tasks.
Total Defeat
Beijing’s massive military buildup and its aggressive policies and pronouncements, says China expert Dr. Michael Pillsbury of National Defense University, make unmistakably clear that its leadership plans to “defeat the United States.” We should not be surprised. Does not all the experience of this bloody century teach us that trade with totalitarian regimes encourages war, not peace? The words of General Douglas MacArthur when he accepted the surrender of Japan’s Emperor Hirohito are most apropos today. Standing on the deck of the USS Missouri in September 1945, he reminded Americans of a costly lesson that we should not allow to be repeated. “We stand in Tokyo today reminiscent of our countryman Commodore Perry 92 years ago,” MacArthur noted. “His purpose was to bring to Japan an era of enlightenment and progress by lifting the veil of isolation to the friendship, trade, and commerce of the world. But alas the knowledge thereby gained of Western science was forged into an instrument of oppression and human enslavement.” The same can be said of our trade with Nazi Germany before the war. And of the Soviet Union, beginning with Lenin’s New Economic Program in the 1920s, which is the deception paradigm for strategic trade being followed by Beijing (and Moscow) today. Real peace between nations can, and often does, lead to mutually beneficial trade, but history repeatedly disproves the fatally false notion so popular today that trade leads ipso facto to peace!
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