U.S. Likely to OK Nuclear Power Deals With China

Amid intensive lobbying by the U.S. nuclear industry, President Clinton is on the verge of certifying that China does not help spread nuclear weapons to other nations, according to administration officials.

That formality would open the way for U.S. companies such as Westinghouse Electric Corp. to sell nuclear power equipment to China. Such sales have been barred by a 1985 law requiring the president to first certify that China does not engage in the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Administration officials, who asked not to be named, suggested that Clinton is likely to act within the next few weeks. China’s certification could be the centerpiece announcement at Clinton’s meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin on Oct. 28-29 in Washington.

Assistant Secretary of State Stanley O. Roth told Congress two weeks ago that although China has not yet met the standards for certification, “we hope that they will by the [time of the] summit.”

U.S. and Chinese officials negotiating in Washington, New York and Beijing have been hurriedly trying to wrap up final details.

Certification is not without its critics.

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has complained that such action would stand as a “testament to the role financial interests play in the U.S. policy toward China.”

The support that has built up within the administration for certification reflects Clinton’s overall approach to addressing the problem of China’s proliferation of deadly arms.

Officials said the president wants specifically to reward China’s progress in changing practices that lead to the spread of nuclear weapons, even though the Chinese government is still providing technology related to missile and chemical-warfare developments to countries such as Iran.

In June, the CIA reported to Congress that, during the last half of 1996, China “was the most significant supplier [in the world] of weapons of mass destruction-related goods and technology to foreign countries.”

“The Chinese provided a tremendous variety of assistance to both Iran’s and Pakistan’s ballistic missile programs,” the CIA report said. “China also was the primary source of nuclear-related equipment and technology to Pakistan and a key supplier to Iran during this reporting period. Iran also obtained considerable chemical warfare-related assistance from China in the form of production equipment and technology.”

Nevertheless, even critics of China’s proliferation practices acknowledge that Beijing recently has taken steps to rein in the help it provides other nations interested in building a nuclear arsenal, even while continuing to spread missile and chemical technology.

China pledged in May 1996 that it no longer would provide assistance to any sort of nuclear facility not under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Despite the CIA report, administration officials believe that China generally has lived up to this pledge.

China, which signed the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1992, also recently adopted a series of regulations controlling its exports of equipment that can be used for developing nuclear weapons.

Some critics view these steps as insufficient.

They say, for instance, that it is too soon to know how China will carry out or enforce the nuclear export controls put into place only a few weeks ago.

Others argue that, even if China has stopped spreading the know-how for nuclear weapons, the Clinton administration should hold up certification until it is clear that Chinese help for other nations’ missile programs also has ended.

“It’s fair to say that since May of last year, there has been a significant improvement in China’s willingness to stop its proliferation of nuclear technology,” said Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills). “At the same time, Chinese missile proliferation continues. . . . My fear is [that] we will all rue the day we did not do more to impede this proliferation.”

In response to such arguments, administration officials said they want to keep separate the issues of China’s role in the proliferation of nuclear weapons and missile programs.

“My view is that it makes much more sense to try to pocket progress where we can find it,” one senior Clinton administration official said. “Getting the Chinese to limit or curtail their nuclear cooperation with Iran is a substantial accomplishment, independent of the missile area.”

Administration officials who work on proliferation problems insisted that they are not being swayed by a desire to help U.S. companies exploit commercial opportunities in China.

But spokesmen for the U.S. nuclear industry and executives of Westinghouse and other firms acknowledged that they have lobbied hard on the issue and are in a hurry for Clinton to certify China’s nonproliferation credentials so U.S. companies can sign possible contracts with the Chinese.

“The real issue is where are [the Chinese] going to buy nuclear power plants?” said Howard Bruschi, Westinghouse’s vice president of science and technology. “Are they going to buy them from the United States? Are they going to buy them from France? Are they going to buy them from Russia? Are they going to buy them from Canada?”

If the Clinton administration fails to certify China soon, Bruschi said, then China is “going to turn to other people.”

Representatives of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade group, said China is the last untapped market in the world in which U.S. firms can hope to sell nuclear power plants.

China’s needs for electricity continue to grow rapidly.

It recently became, for the first time, a net importer of oil. Its huge coal reserves are located mostly inland, far from the coastal areas where Chinese officials have talked of building nuclear plants.

These facts, U.S. industry officials said, provide the impetus for China to start awarding contracts for large numbers of new nuclear plants beyond those few already in operation.

Chinese officials have whetted the appetite of U.S. companies by suggesting that at some point they will turn to what is called “standardization”--selecting one company’s designs as the model for all of their nation’s new plants. “The real bang for the buck is standardization,” Bruschi said.

Skeptics said the U.S. nuclear industry’s talk of as much as $60 billion in new sales to China is a pipe dream.

In fact, some said, China’s main goal is to set off a bidding war among companies seeking contracts in China.

“What China really wants is to pit the United States against the other nuclear suppliers of the world to drive down the price of the one or two reactors China buys before it [copies the design for its other plants],” said Gary Milhollan of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a Washington-based group that works against arms proliferation. “There is not much in this for American business.”

Westinghouse and other U.S. companies first tried to land contracts for nuclear plants in China in the early 1980s.

They were stymied when Congress--concerned by evidence that China was helping Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program--passed the 1985 law requiring certification that the Chinese were not engaging in nuclear proliferation.