Chinese WMD Proliferation

Since there is no thread on Chinese WMD Proliferations, so I guess it is a good time to start a thread dealing with those issues. I found two really old yet extremely accurate articles dealing with Chinese WMD Proliferation during 80s.

January 4, 1989 New York Time

Bonn's Proliferation Policy
By GARY MILHOLLIN; GARY MILHOLLIN, PROFESSOR OF LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AT MADISON, IS DIRECTOR OF THE WISCONSIN PROJECT ON NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL.
LEAD: It should come as no surprise that a West German company has been accused of helping Libya build a plant to produce poison gas. If true, this is only the latest in a long line of irresponsible West German exports.

It should come as no surprise that a West German company has been accused of helping Libya build a plant to produce poison gas. If true, this is only the latest in a long line of irresponsible West German exports.

Citing intelligence reports, Reagan Administration officials charge that the West German company Imhausen-Chemie played a central role in the design and construction of the Libyan plant.

The company's president, Dr. Jurgen Hippenstiel-Imhausen, has denied any participation, and Libya insists the installation will be used only to make pharmaceuticals. The West German Government says that its investigation so far does not prove that the company is guilty of the charges.

But Bonn has rarely done much to discover or stop dangerous exports.

A West German company, Karl Kolb, was identified in 1984 as the unwitting source of equipment that Iraq used to manufacture the nerve gas it used against Iran. And, for at least a decade, West German companies have been the principal suppliers of secret atom bomb programs around the world.

To South Africa, West German companies sent low-enriched uranium, which multiplied Pretoria's ability to make high-enriched uranium for bombs.

To Israel went heavy water, which increased the output of Israel's bomb-making reactor at Dimona. To Argentina went heavy water that could run a secret bomb-making reactor in the future.

To Pakistan went an entire factory to help process uranium for bombs, plus tritium and tritium-making equipment to multiply the explosive power of its first generation of nuclear bombs.

To India went ''reflector material'' - probably beryllium for the core of the bomb itself - and enough heavy water to let India run for the first time three large bomb-making reactors outside international controls.

Many of the nuclear exports lacked the required licenses. Companies are likely to have conspired with the recipients to move the goods across borders. The fact is, most of the exports were expressly forbidden by West German pledges under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and raise strong questions whether Bonn cares about the treaty at all.

Outside protests have failed to stop the transfers. The United States asked Bonn in 1981 to stop the Hempel Group, in Dusseldorf, from sending enriched uranium to South Africa and heavy water to Argentina. Switzerland asked in 1985 for information about the same Hempel Group's sale of heavy water to India through Zurich.

In 1986, Washington asked Bonn to stop Hempel from sending heavy water to India, and warned in a memo of an even larger scheme to sell heavy water ''coordinated from within West Germany by Hempel Company officials.'' Norway asked West Germany in 1988 to investigate Hempel's sale of Norwegian heavy water to India through Basel. In every case, Bonn refused to provide information, investigate or acknowledge any gap in its laws.

Why is West Germany so lax? To promote trade, Bonn has deliberately kept its export laws weak, and it doesn't want to think about tightening them. And the staff for policing sensitive exports is woefully inadequate, making it easy for an unscrupulous operator to evade controls.

But it's not just a matter of Bonn overzealously promoting exports or neglecting to plug gaps in the regulations. The illegal exports have been going on for more than a decade, and Bonn has been warned repeatedly about violations.

The truth lies deeper, and has finally exasperated American officials, leading them to the extraordinary step of publicly naming the company they think is involved in building the Libyan plant and even revealing that President Reagan asked Chancellor Helmut Kohl for help in their November meeting. They have told me privately that West German nuclear exporters are being protected by powerful political allies.

We have no proof that West German political leaders are being paid to look the other way. But the behavior of the Christian Democrats and Free Democrats, who run the country, is not encouraging. Some of them have banded together in Parliament to defend Hempel, arguing that the company has not violated German law. Moreover, they refuse to consider whether the law is so full of holes that it must be tightened.

This attitude not only threatens world security but will harm West Germany's international reputation unless Bonn acts immediately to curtail illegal exports and better monitor those sensitive items that could be misused by importing nations.

Regardless of gaps in its laws, the West German Government should not be in the position of defending the sale to third world nations of materials to make nuclear and chemical bombs. If West Germany's foreign trade law is inadequate, as it obviously is, officials should admit that fact and change it.

If Bonn is determined to act responsibly, then it should talk to the governments of the importing countries about returning items that were obtained illegally. The surest way to halt the nuclear black market is for countries to publicly demand their goods back.

Norway, for example, has just asked India to account for the Norwegian heavy water that was delivered by Hempel illegally in 1983. Norway may confront India in the United Nations if India refuses.

West Germany can still show the world that it is not an exporter of mass destruction. First, however, it must quit pretending that nothing is wrong.

A New China Syndrome: Beijing's Atomic Bazaar

By Gary Milhollin and Gerard White

The Washington Post
May 12, 1991, Page C1


It should come as no surprise that China is selling Pakistan a nuclear-capable missile and selling Algeria a reactor that could fuel nuclear weapons. These are only the latest in a long line of irresponsible Chinese weapons exports. During the 1980s, China sold billions of dollars worth of nuclear and missile technology to South Asia, South Africa, South America and the Middle East. That these sales are still happening -- after a decade of U.S. efforts to stop them -- shows how dismally U.S. diplomacy has failed.

Last week, President Bush sent yet another mission to Beijing, where Undersecretary of State Robert Kimmitt complained about China's arms exports and its human rights record. Late in the week, Wu Jianmin, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, publicly rebuked the U.S. mission, saying in part that "China's policies . . .will not be changed by external pressure."

Wu's public tirade did not mention Beijing's arms-export record. A study that we have just completed shows that China has never kept its promises to restrain weapons exports and that its real goal is to expand its global influence by profiting from nuclear and missile sales.

By June 3, Bush must decide whether to renew China's most favored nation (MFN) trading status, a benefit worth billions to Chinese exporters. China's trade surplus with the United States jumped from $ 3.5 billion in 1988 to $ 10.4 billion in 1989, the largest U.S. trade deficit after Japan and Taiwan. This year the gap could top $ 15 billion. Revoking MFN would increase American tariffs as much as tenfold and could force China to decide whether its huge U.S. trade profits are more important than the secret nuclear and missile deals we describe below:

South Asia: In 1983, U.S. intelligence made a surprising discovery: For the first time, one developing country had given another the complete design of a tested nuclear weapon with a yield of about 25 kilotons, twice the power of the Hiroshima bomb. The supplier was China, the recipient Pakistan. According to U.S. officials, American agents even learned catalogue numbers of some weapon parts. Indignant, U.S. officials made a model of the bomb -- about the size of a soccer ball and with detonators around its surface -- and showed it to Pakistani diplomats. Computer modeling of the weapon by U.S. weapons experts showed it to be completely reliable.

U.S. officials now confirm that China also gave Pakistan something worse -- enough weapon-grade uranium to fuel two nuclear weapons.

With the Chinese design, Pakistan has been able to make and test nuclear weapon parts one by one and to test the whole design with a dummy nuclear core. According to a news report unchallenged by U.S. officials, Pakistan now has a workable bomb weighing only 400 pounds.

Despite all this, U.S. officials in April 1984 initialed a nuclear trade agreement with China based on a famous earlier White House toast in which Premier Zhao declared that China does not "engage in nuclear proliferation ourselves, nor do we help other countries develop nuclear weapons."

But Chinese scientists were soon seen at Pakistan's secret Kahuta complex, helping Pakistan produce weapon-strength uranium with gas centrifuges. Meanwhile, China secretly sold sensitive nuclear material to Pakistan's rival, India, that would allow India to start building a nuclear arsenal. A Reagan administration official admitted that this conduct "raised certain questions about how the Chinese interpret their nonproliferation policies . . . ."

The Reagan administration nevertheless signed the agreement and told Congress that "China has now declared its opposition to proliferation and taken concrete steps toward global nonproliferation norms and practices."

China's help to Pakistan continues. According to West German officials, China in 1986 sold Pakistan tritium, used to achieve fusion in hydrogen bombs and boost the yield of atomic bombs enough to destroy entire cities. Pakistan is believed to have enough weapon-grade uranium for about 10 nuclear weapons.

Last month, China was discovered by U.S. intelligence sources to be secretly selling Pakistan the M-11 missile, which can carry a nuclear warhead about 185 miles. U.S. intelligence has already sighted M-11 launchers in Pakistan. The M-11's range is at the limit set by the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime, an agreement among industrial nations not to export missiles that can carry nuclear-sized payloads more than 185 miles. China has rejected the regime, which its exports clearly undermine.

Meanwhile, from 1982 to 1987, China secretly sold India at least 130 to 150 tons of "heavy water," dealing through a West German broker, Alfred Hempel, an ex-Nazi who figured in various Chinese nuclear technology deals. Heavy water is used to make plutonium, a nuclear weapon fuel. The Chinese could have been under no illusions about where the heavy water was going. Ton quantities of heavy water are required only for reactors, and in the mid-1980s, only India's reactors needed multi-ton quantities.

China sold the heavy water with no strings attached, allowing India for the first time to start a reactor entirely free of international controls -- meaning that the reactor's plutonium would be free to go into atomic bombs. Chinese heavy water sales continued until 1987, enabling India to import enough to start at least two and possibly three reactors free of international controls. Running at full capacity, these three reactors can make enough plutonium for up to 40 atomic bombs per year.

South Africa, South America: As early as 1981, U.S. officials protested Chinese shipments to South Africa and South America. Hempel was sending Chinese uranium to South Africa and uranium and heavy water to Argentina. The U.S. State Department, anxious to get South Africa to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, complained that the Chinese enriched uranium "would weaken the American potential to influence South African policies." The two large shipments could triple the production of weapon-grade bomb fuel.

Asked to explain the shipments to Argentina, China's Assistant Foreign Minister Song Zhigaung blamed Hempel, saying he had guaranteed that "the end user was in the Federal Republic of Germany and that the delivery was destined for peaceful use." But in almost the same breath, Song admitted being told that "the fuel reached Argentina."

In 1982, well after the first U.S. complaints, Hempel sent at least 50 more tons of Chinese heavy water to Argentina, enough to make a few atomic bombs per year if Argentina wanted. A French report on the shipments later comented, "One receives the impression that . . . for the present, each Chinese department tries in its own way to bring in the much sought-after foreign exchange . . . ."

In 1984, China also supplied Argentina's rival, Brazil. Secretly and without submitting to international inspection, China shipped enriched uranium useful to bomb-making. Brazil, like Argentina, rejects the Nonproliferation Treaty and has a secret nuclear program.

China also agreed with Brazil in 1985 to help with liquid fuel technology and missile guidance in return for solid fuel rocket technology. This may help Brazil build its first strategic missile, projected to have a 2,000-mile range, from its VLS space rocket.

The Middle East: Last month, U.S. intelligence revealed that China was secretly building a heavy water reactor in Algeria, which has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The reactor is too small to produce electricity economically and too large for research. Its sole purpose seems to be to make nuclear weapon material.

At an announced power of 15 megawatts, the reactor could make enough plutonium for about two bombs every three years. Reactor experts say that with upgrading, the Algerian reactor could make up to two bombs per year. (In the 1970s, Israel quietly scaled up its Dimona heavy water reactor from 26 to more than 100 megawatts).

Its reactor discovered, Algeria promised to put it under international inspection. But even with inspection, the only barrier to nuclear weapons will be Algeria's pledge to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) not to divert the reactor's plutonium for bombs. But such a pledge can be difficult to enforce at times of tension. For example, ever since the Persian Gulf war, the IAEA has been unable to inspect, and therefore to enforce, a similar pledge by Iraq.

Chinese missile sales in the region include selling the 1,500-mile range CSS-2 to Saudi Arabia. The low-accuracy missile is almost useless as a conventional weapon, but a threat when armed with a nuclear warhead, whose large blast compensates for the inaccuracy.

In July 1988, China apparently agreed to sell Syria the M-9 missile, designed to carry a nuclear warhead about 375 miles. After U.S. officials complained, a Chinese spokesman declared that "China always held a serious attitude toward the problem of selling medium-range missiles." But even this vague statement may not apply: China may consider the M-9 a short-range missile.

Syria is already taking delivery of North Korean Scud missiles produced with Chinese help, a three-corner arrangement that makes China and North Korea the last suppliers of dangerous missiles in the world.

American diplomats have utterly failed to bring China under control. China rejects the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the two multilateral efforts that try to limit dangerous nuclear sales. China also rejects the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), a group of 16 nations pledged to halt the spread of long-range missiles.

According to a study in the journal International Security, U.S. diplomats who deal with the Foreign Ministry have been talking to the wrong people. "Decision-making on arms sales resides in specialized corporations that exercise nearly autonomous authority because of their . . .personal connections."

The study says that the Chinese military controls the country's two major exporting corporations. By negotiating secretly with foreign buyers and reporting directly to the highest echelons of the regime, the corporations avoid interference from the Foreign Ministry. The military wants hard currency to buy advanced weapons abroad to modernize its obsolescent armed forces.

As it turns out, the managers of the exporting firms are often the children or relatives of Communist Party leaders, including Deng Xiaoping. According to the trade journal Nucleonics Week, these managers keep a share of the profits for deposit in foreign bank accounts and have made nuclear smuggling a "quasi-official Chinese policy."

The only way to change China's behavior is to force a crackdown on the exporters. Washington should suspend most favored nation trade status until China makes real commitments. China must join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which would commit China to reasonable nuclear export behavior. To show good faith, China should scale down the Algerian research reactor to two megawatts, enough for research but too small for bomb-making. This is the only real protection against the reactor's misuse.

China must also join the MTCR, which could curb its missile exports. Again to show good faith, China should publicly renounce its M-11 missile sale to Pakistan and M-9 missile sale to Syria. Indeed, if these sales go through, China could face sanctions under the U.S. Missile Technology Control Act. The president could bar the exporter from receiving U.S. technology or exporting to the United States.

If China does not take these actions, it should lose access to U.S. high technology. Recently, Bush took the first step by blocking U.S. parts for a Chinese satellite. The state-owned buyer in China was suspected of selling missiles to Pakistan. This was no surprise: China's high-tech importers are the same companies that make the dangerous missile sales. As a second step, Bush should hold up the sale of a high-powered computer that he approved in December. If China's sales persist, the U.S. Commerce Department should add China to the "Z List" of countries such as North Korea and Cuba to which sales of U.S. high technology is barred.

With the Cold War over, the United States no longer needs China to counter the Soviet Union. The main threat to world security, as the Gulf War showed, now comes from Third World dictators brandishing weapons of mass destruction. To treat as a friend a country that supplies these weapons is certain folly. To coddle China's dictators -- as we did Saddam Hussein -- only puts off the day of reckoning. The United States must choke the Chinese arms suppliers now or face the exports later.

@_@ Dude, those articles are more than 15 years old. It's no where near "current affairs".

yea i know, but it is still interesting, since it offered an insight into the extend of chinese wmd proliferation back in the 80s

It should come as no surprise that Gary Milhollin can only start his articles with the phrase "it should come as no surprise".

well it is a surprise based on the accuracy of his assessment, but it seems the proliferation died down considerably since mid 90s onward.

* found another article by GARY MILHOLLIN, just for reference purposes, personally, i though the fellow should know that one cannot put an array of centrifuges on a truck after all these years



Why Iraq Will Defeat Arms Inspectors

By GARY MILHOLLIN and KELLY MOTZ

The New York Times
September 16, 2002, p. A21


Many voices are now calling for renewed United Nations inspections in Iraq. Some belong to critics of the Bush administration who are opposed to war. Others belong to those who favor war but see inspections — which they fully expect to fail — as the needed triggering event for war. Still other Iraq experts believe that Saddam Hussein himself will invite the inspectors back as a means of forestalling invasion if troops begin to move in his direction.

Whatever one's stance on how best to handle Saddam Hussein, it is crucial to understand one thing: United Nations inspections, as they are currently constituted, will never work.

There are several reasons for this. Consider the record of the United Nations Special Commission, an agency that was charged with inspecting Iraq's weapons programs from 1991 to 1998. While Unscom did manage to destroy tons of missiles and chemical and biological weapons, it could not complete the job. Iraqi obfuscations prevented it from ever getting a full picture of the entire weapons production effort. The commission's replacement, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which has not yet been allowed to enter Iraq, will have even less success given its structure and policies.

Unscom was staffed mainly by officials on loan from national governments who did not owe their jobs to the United Nations; Unmovic personnel, on the other hand, are United Nations employees who are likely to be hobbled by the United Nations' notoriously inefficient bureaucracy.

These inspectors are not set up to make effective use of intelligence information. In the 1990's, American intelligence officials supplied secret information to selected Unscom inspectors, knowing that the information would be protected and be used to uncover hidden Iraqi weapons facilities. At Unmovic, however, no inspector will be allowed to receive intelligence information on a privileged basis, a policy that increases the risk of leaks to the Iraqis. Unmovic has also declared that it will not allow any information gathered from its inspections to flow back to national intelligence agencies. This eliminates the main incentive for intelligence sources to provide Unmovic with useful information in the first place.

Even if it is allowed into Iraq, Unmovic will run up against obstacles at least as formidable as those that stymied Unscom. After years of practice, Unscom became adept at launching surprise visits to weapons sites, yet Iraq's intelligence operatives defeated it more often than not. It was a rare inspection when the Iraqis did not know what the inspectors were looking for before they arrived. Most Unmovic inspectors have little experience in Iraq and even less in handling intelligence information.

Compounding this handicap is the fact that Iraq has taken considerable pains to make its weapons programs mobile. Laboratories, components and materials are ready to hit the road at a moment's notice. Once, as an experiment, Unscom had photos taken from a U2 spy plane of a site that it was about to inspect. First the photos showed no activity, then large numbers of Iraqi vehicles leaving the site, then no activity, then the inspectors' vehicles arriving.

Unmovic is also stuck with a deal the United Nations made in 1998 on "presidential sites." Iraq is allowed to designate vast swaths of land (big enough to contain entire factories) that the inspectors can visit only after announcing the visit in advance, disclosing the composition of the inspection team (nuclear or biological experts, for example) and taking along a special group of diplomats. This loophole creates refuges for mobile items and could defeat virtually any inspection effort.

New inspections will occur under the threat of imminent American military action. Any announcement that Iraq is not cooperating could be a casus belli. Such a risk might encourage Unmovic to monitor what is already known rather than aggressively try to find what is hidden. This could mean that the goal of inspections — the disarmament of Iraq — might never be achieved. Which brings us to the heart of the matter. Inspections can only do one thing well: verify that a country's declarations about a weapons program are honest and complete. It is feasible for inspectors to look at sites and equipment to see whether the official story about their use is accurate. Inspectors can rely on scientific principles, intelligence information and surprise visits to known weapons production sites to test what they are told. It is a different proposition altogether to wander about a country looking for what has been deliberately concealed. That is a task with no end.

For inspectors to do their job, they have to have the truth, which can only come from the Iraqis. As President Bush told the United Nations last week, the world needs an Iraqi government that will stop lying and surrender the weapons programs. That is not likely to happen as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power.

i tried reading this a few times...

sinowarrior said:

Last month, China was discovered by U.S. intelligence sources to be secretly selling Pakistan the M-11 missile, which can carry a nuclear warhead about 185 miles. U.S. intelligence has already sighted M-11 launchers in Pakistan. The M-11's range is at the limit set by the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime, an agreement among industrial nations not to export missiles that can carry nuclear-sized payloads more than 185 miles. China has rejected the regime, which its exports clearly undermine.

Click to expand...

but the way he stated the fact suggest China is within the agreement so i don't know what he is smoking...

any those are just old news, and quite a lot of claim made by him were indeed true.