China Officers Again Work in U.S. on Arms

Over the last four weeks, the Bush Administration has permitted Chinese military officers to return to work in the United States on the ground-breaking $500-million arms sales program from which they were excluded after the Chinese army’s bloody crackdown on student demonstrations last June.

The Chinese officers’ quiet return to a U.S. military base and to facilities of the Grumman Corp. reflects an effort by the Administration to minimize the impact of the sanctions against China that were imposed as a protest against the Chinese army’s suppression of the pro-democracy movement.

Immediately after the June 3-4 massacre in Beijing, President Bush ordered a suspension of all U.S. military sales to China and of all visits between U.S. and Chinese military leaders. At that time, Chinese military officers who had come to the United States for the mammoth program to upgrade China’s F-8 fighter planes were told to stop reporting for work. A few stayed on here, but most of them returned home last summer.

However, spokesmen for the Grumman Corp. in Bethpage, L.I., and at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio, confirmed that Chinese officers were allowed to resume work in both facilities earlier this month. The F-8 modernization program, which has the code name “Peace Pearl,” is by far the largest single military cooperation program between the United States and China.

“It was determined by the U.S. government that they (the Chinese military personnel) are needed,” explained a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lundquist. “They were authorized to return in October. You can assume that the decision was fully coordinated by the Defense Department, the State Department, the White House and National Security Council.”

“We can’t proceed without the participation of some Chinese engineering and maintenance personnel,” Lundquist said. “. . . To the best of my knowledge, the purpose here is not for training (of the Chinese). But training may be part of the overall package. There may be a fine line between them learning something and providing the technical support we need.”

Since June, the presence of the Chinese military officers in the United States has been so sensitive that some U.S. Air Force personnel have gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal it.

Last month, local police arrested a Chinese military officer for shoplifting at a department store in Kettering, Ohio, near Wright-Patterson. Within hours, the U.S. Air Force colonel supervising the F-8 fighter division there paid the Chinese officer’s bail and helped hire a lawyer who succeeded in getting criminal charges dismissed.

When the Dayton Daily News sought access to the records of this case, the defense attorney--who is a retired Air Force officer--persuaded the judge to seal all the records of the incident. An Ohio appeals court ruled last week that the Dayton newspaper is entitled to examine these records.

Lundquist, the Pentagon spokesman, asserted that “the Department of Defense was not involved” in bailing out the Chinese officer or in sealing arrest records in the case.

“The guy who bailed him out was an employee of the Air Force Aeronautical Systems Division, acting as a private citizen and as a friend, and not on the direction or authorization of the Department of Defense,” he said.

In June, when the Bush Administration announced that it was freezing military sales to China, Administration officials said the President’s action would apply to $600 million in arms that previously had been ordered by China from the U.S. government.

“It is very important the Chinese leaders know it’s not going to be business as usual,” Bush explained at the time. “The United States cannot condone the violent attacks (by the Chinese army).”

After the embargo was announced, Defense Department officials confirmed that it would have limited impact because it would stop only the final delivery of U.S. military equipment to China. They said that the development work on arms-sale programs would go forward on schedule.

Project Peace Pearl, the program in which the United States is selling advanced avionics equipment to upgrade China’s F-8 jets, is still in the development stage. The first shipment of the avionics equipment is not scheduled until 1992.

Grumman, the Long Island firm that has the main contract for Peace Pearl, kept its 250 employees on the job. However, on June 5, immediately after Bush’s freeze order, Grumman told 40 Chinese nationals working alongside the Americans “that it was their last day, that they had to discontinue coming to work,” said Grumman official Miriam Reid.

Two Chinese military officers who had been working as liaison officers for the F-8 fighter program at Wright-Patterson Air Base were also told to stop coming to work. The Air Force unit that runs Project Peace Pearl and supervises the contract with Grumman is stationed at the Ohio air base.

“At that time, there were only two here,” said Mike Wallace, a spokesman at Wright-Patterson. “They were not kicked off the base, but they were told they could not work in the office. They still had access to the commissary, the base exchange, and so forth.” On Sept. 6, the arrest of the Chinese military officer for shoplifting occurred.

Over the summer, 35 Chinese nationals barred from working at Grumman went home. The other five remained in this country.

According to Reid, the Grumman spokesman, these five were allowed to return to work on Oct. 2. This week, another 18 Chinese officials have arrived at Grumman to begin long-term work on the F-8 program, and 10 more Chinese officers made a two-day visit to the Long Island facility.

“The Chinese are back at work, both at (Wright-Patterson) and at Grumman,” said Wallace. “They were authorized to return at the beginning of October.”

“We’re going to continue the work,” said Lundquist, the Pentagon spokesman. “Whether the aircraft will be delivered when the work is done, that’s between the Chinese government and the U.S. government.”

In addition to the $500-million F-8 avionics program, the arms deals with China supposedly covered by Bush’s freeze order include another $100 million in radar, artillery modernization, torpedoes and torpedo launchers for the Chinese armed forces.

However, some of this equipment already had been shipped from the United States to China before the Administration’s freeze order was imposed, and other materiel is still being manufactured for future deliveries.

The freeze on military sales to China was one of several sanctions that the Bush Administration imposed after the People’s Liberation Army broke up the democracy demonstrations at Tian An Men Square.

Among the other Administration actions was a suspension of any exchanges between U.S. officials and the Chinese government at the rank of assistant secretary or higher. But the impact of this sanction also was eased when the Bush Administration later decided that it applied only to official visits between Washington and Beijing, and not to contacts between U.S. and Chinese leaders in other locations.

As a result, Secretary of State James A. Baker III met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen in Paris and at the United Nations, and outgoing Chinese Ambassador Han Xu saw Bush, Vice President Dan Quayle and Baker before leaving Washington last summer. This week, the White House announced that an upcoming visit to China by former President Richard M. Nixon is being closely coordinated with the White House.