SENSATIONAL charges that U.S. lobbyists and Chinese campaign contributions lulled the Clinton administration into unwittingly giving China access to critical missile technology obscure real security challenges facing the United States.
While Washington bickers over which political party was least irresponsible in approving satellite launches on Chinese rockets (Republican administrations allowed nine, Democratic 11), U.S. leaders should focus on far more serious threats arising from the seamless link between commerce and warfare in the post-Cold War era.
National-security concerns
It is folly to think that the Clinton administration or its predecessors could separate political, commercial and national-security concerns involved in satellite launches or any other business transaction. A partnership between U.S. high-tech space companies and Chinese missile makers requires countless technical and engineering exchanges to deploy satellites worth hundreds of millions of dollars. U.S. policy guaranteed that China's launch capabilities would improve.
Administration critics contend that candidate Bill Clinton campaigned against Reagan-Bush policies permitting Chinese launches of U.S. satellites even as China sold missiles to countries in the Middle East. Yet, as president, Mr. Clinton put the Commerce Department in charge of foreign satellite sales, scrapped technology-export controls and ignored continuing evidence of Chinese missile sales. When Washington's attention waned, U.S. satellite makers, exploiting China's low-cost launchers, grew more careless.
In 1996, experts from Hughes Electronics Corp. and Loral Space Communications Ltd., two companies heavily involved with Chinese aerospace, analyzed for insurers the crash of a Chinese missile launching a $200-million U.S. communications satellite. Loral reportedly faxed portions of the report to Chinese officials before obtaining U.S. clearance.
In February, Mr. Clinton allowed Loral to sell China another satellite despite State Department objections that a Justice Department investigation of whether the two U.S. companies divulged militarily sensitive technology to the Chinese in their analysis of the 1996 crash could be compromised. Loral and, reportedly, Chinese government officials were large Democratic Party contributors.
