U.S. Takes New Tack on China Arms Exports

The Clinton administration is quietly attempting to complete a new arms-control agreement in which China would promise to stop supplying missile technology to Pakistan, Iran and other countries, according to administration officials.

Under the proposed deal, China would adopt its own new export-control laws covering missile technology, the officials said.

The Chinese have indicated a willingness to work out a deal in accord with the administration’s approach. The negotiations, which are continuing this month in Beijing, center on how detailed and explicit the Chinese laws will be.

The aim is to have an agreement ready to be signed during Clinton’s last months in office, perhaps at his final meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin in November.

But the deal now envisioned would fall short of Clinton’s oft-stated goal of bringing China into the Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR, the accord signed by about 30 nations to restrict the export of missiles, missile parts and know-how.

Following Clinton’s 1998 trip to Beijing, administration officials asserted that one of his main accomplishments had been winning China’s assent to “actively study” joining the MTCR.

“It’s important that China join the Missile Technology Control Regime, a step President Jiang agreed to consider at last year’s summit in Beijing,” Clinton asserted in a 1999 speech. The administration had earlier brought Russia into the MTCR as a full member.

However, China has balked at moving forward, and administration officials have decided to push for a less sweeping agreement in which Beijing would adopt its own laws on missile proliferation without joining the MTCR.

Stopping China’s proliferation of missile technology has been a continuing preoccupation for the Clinton administration, as it was for the Bush administration.

Last summer, the CIA reported to Congress that China’s technical assistance to Pakistan’s missile program was increasing. Intelligence officials said China had been providing items such as guidance systems and specialty steels, as well as scientists and technical advice.

The CIA, in an unclassified report covering the last half of 1999, said that in addition to Pakistan, “firms in China provided missile-related items, raw materials, and/or assistance to several countries of proliferation concern--such as Iran, North Korea and Libya.”

The administration has been under pressure from Congress to impose sanctions against China for its export of M-11 missiles to Pakistan in 1992, and for subsequent missile-related sales to Pakistan. Those exports appear to be covered by a 1990 law authorizing the imposition of sanctions to combat missile proliferation.

Some Republicans on Capitol Hill reacted negatively Wednesday to the administration’s current approach, arguing that China won’t abide by the export controls it adopts.

“Chinese domestic law isn’t worth the paper it’s written on or the blood it’s written with,” said Marc Thiessen, a spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whose chairman is Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). Thiessen said the administration’s new effort is merely “a fig leaf to cover up an eight-year failure by this administration in containing proliferation to rogue states.”

For many years, China has said it does not like the concept of the MTCR. Chinese officials have complained that they were not a member of the group that originally set the rules and that the regime amounts to a cartel in which the countries that already have missile capabilities keep them out of the hands of other countries.

More recently, Chinese officials have raised other objections. In January, Sha Zukang, China’s top arms-control negotiator, told The Times that last year’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, especially the airstrike that hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, “dealt a heavy blow to the MTCR.”

“Since the [Clinton] visit . . . everyone has seen the massive use of missiles [in Yugoslavia]--modern, accurate, precision-guided missiles, lasting for 78 days,” Sha said in an interview. “Like it or not, that [NATO campaign] is an excellent advertisement for missiles.”

Asked about China’s statement during the 1998 summit that it would actively study joining the MTCR, Sha pointed out that the agreement didn’t include the word “soon.”

In the face of Beijing’s objections, Clinton administration officials decided to seek a deal in which China would adopt laws that are similar to MTCR rules.

“We don’t care what it’s called, as long as it works,” explained one administration official, who, like others interviewed for this report, was not willing to speak on the record about the administration’s new initiative.

The movement toward a deal began last month, when Sha met with officials from the National Security Council and the State Department who were in Beijing to attend an arms-control conference.

Some critics say that any new Chinese laws on missile technology would lack the impact and international validity of a decision to join the MTCR.

“The next time they export something bad to Pakistan, all we can do is complain that they aren’t following their own laws,” said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, which seeks tougher policies on proliferation. “And then they can say that’s their own business.”

However, Milhollin and other critics said they had misgivings about the Clinton administration’s long effort to bring China into the MTCR as well.

If China were in the MTCR, it would be entitled to share intelligence about missiles with the United States and other countries. And if China were a member, that could make it easier for other MTCR countries, including the United States, to sell missile or satellite technology to China.

Moreover, some Republicans on Capitol Hill say they don’t want China brought into the MTCR because they claim Beijing wouldn’t follow the rules anyway, and because membership would make it harder for the U.S. to impose sanctions on China. The laws authorizing sanctions for missile proliferation differentiate between members of the MTCR and those outside the regime.

Some experts argue that China holds out the prospect of joining the MTCR, without intending to ever do so, as a way of gaining leverage over the U.S. in other areas such as U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and plans for a U.S. missile defense system.

“The more we seek it [China’s MTCR membership], the more leverage they have over us,” said Bates Gill, a specialist on Chinese weapons proliferation at the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank in Washington. “Why should we invest the political capital when they can extract concessions bit by bit from us, and when in the end they’re not going to join?”