Cox Endorses Easing Limits on Computer Sales to China
Less than three weeks after a congressional committee charged that China’s purchase of U.S. computers had damaged American national security, the committee chairman Thursday endorsed easing, not tightening, the most stringent U.S. limit on technology purchases, those by the Chinese military.
Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) described his decision as a bow to the reality that China can already buy powerful computers through Hong Kong. He said it does not reflect any wavering in his drive to deny China access to advanced technology that can be put to military use.
But industry executives and others say the California lawmaker appears to have shifted his position closer to that of the Clinton administration, which Cox has sharply criticized. The administration argues that, with powerful machines easily available, restrictions should not penalize U.S. computer makers without benefiting national security.
“The brute fact of life is the availability of this technology” to China, Cox said in an interview.
He said he was conceding the higher limit on U.S. computer sales to China for military purposes “because we’re already there. It’s a reality, and it’s virtually impossible to roll it back.”
Washington regulates the overseas sale of computers based on their speed, which it measures in MTOPS, or millions of theoretical operations per second. Under current rules, U.S. computer makers are free to sell machines to China for military purposes with speeds of up to 2,000 MTOPS, or roughly half again as powerful as the latest generation of PCs available in the U.S. After that, they must obtain a license that effectively gives the government veto power over sales.
Cox said Thursday that he can accept boosting the 2,000-MTOP limit to 10,000 MTOPS, even though the three-volume report issued last month by the committee he heads found substantial and varied military uses for computers of that speed.
Cox’s announcement of his willingness to accept the increase came as chief executives of the nation’s biggest computer companies arrived in Washington for an intensive lobbying campaign aimed at easing government controls on overseas sales, especially to the huge Chinese market.
Meeting with members of Congress, the executives painted a picture of lost sales and jobs and a choked licensing process if Washington fails to raise the threshold. They are scheduled to take their message to senior White House officials today. The industry wants to raise the most stringent limit for Chinse sales to 12,300 MTOPS.
“What we keep arguing is, don’t screw up a good business,” Lewis E. Platt, chairman and chief executive of computer giant Hewlett-Packard Co., told reporters.
Executives and administration officials were relieved at the news of Cox’s willingness to go along with easing restrictions, saying they had feared that his committee’s charges of Chinese spying at U.S. weapons labs, and purchases of American high technology, had erased chances for change.
“I am delighted that Mr. Cox is joining the emerging consensus” for easing restrictions on overseas computer sales, said William A. Reinsch, the Commerce Department undersecretary in charge of administering the government’s export licensing system.
“We’ve had meetings over the last two days in which it’s clear [Cox] is supportive of raising the threshold,” said Kenneth R. Kay, executive director of the industry’s Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports.
Privately, both industry and administration officials expressed surprise at Cox’s readiness to ease, saying his decision seemed at variance with the findings of his committee. “The brunt of the committee’s interpretation to date has been that somehow there was something terrible about 2,000-to-7,000-MTOPS machines being in China,” said one official, who asked not to be identified.
In its report, the panel described a variety of troubling military uses even for 2,000-MTOP machines. Among them: nuclear weapons testing, designing sensors for surveillance and image processing and development of protective clothing for chemical warfare.
Cox took considerable offense at suggestions that he was changing his position on computer sales to China. He asserted that his agreement to accept an increase grew out of his panel’s findings and had nothing to do with computer industry lobbying.
“Reporting this as a change does grave violence to our work,” he said. “This is now of a form of, ‘Am I still beating my wife?’ ”
The committee concluded that China could already buy powerful computers through Hong Kong, where the limit on unrestricted sales by U.S. makers is 10,000 MTOPS, set before the city reverted to Chinese control in 1997. The panel’s recommendations included calling for a study of the national security impact of maintaining looser controls on Hong Kong than on China.
Despite Cox’s assertion of consistency, it was difficult to determine precisely what the lawmaker’s position was. In his interview and in meetings with computer executives, he appeared ready to accept easing the 2,000-MTOPS limit without requiring concessions by China. But in testimony Thursday morning, he seemed to treat the easing as a quid pro quo.
“As we change the [computer] speed levels for purposes of export, we ought to keep in mind the degree to which we are getting cooperation from [China],” he told the Senate Banking Committee. “If we are not getting cooperation on end-use verification, then there is no reason in the world we should sell faster computers,” he said.
