Nurturing the Threat?

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Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington on 16-20 January, 2011 has highlighted the importance of US-China relations. The Obama Administration, having set a goal of doubling US exports in five years,[i] has already taken steps that have the potential to increase the flow of sensitive technologies to China. The administration remains under pressure from China to further remove restrictions on US exports. International competition and the desire of US industry to have access to China’s growing markets provide further impetus. President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address further stressed his vision of expanded exports, with China being seen as a prime potential market.

Meanwhile, in the words of a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report: “China relies on foreign technology, acquisition of dual-use components, and focused indigenous research and development to advance military modernization.”

The pitfalls inherent in aiming for the economic rewards of high-technology trade with China while avoiding the transfer of technology that will strengthen Chinese military capabilities are not new. Currently, the US generally prohibits arms exports to China and has placed strict limits on dual-use technology. The European Union (EU) also continues to embargo arms to China, as it has since 1989. In May 1999, the Report of the Select Committee on US National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, better known as the Cox report, after the chair of the bipartisan committee, then-Rep. Christopher Cox, R-California, was released. It detailed how the Clinton administration and its predecessors had permitted the export of dual-use technology that had contributed to the rise of Chinese military capabilities and at the same time had failed to deal with extensive Chinese espionage activities.[ii] The report, and the news coverage it generated, underlined the importance of technology transfer to China. In 1999, Dr. Henry Sokolski, a leading expert on proliferation, wrote, of the findings of the Cox committee: “All this has helped the People’s Liberation Army acquire in less than 10 years the military technology the US needed nearly half a century to develop.”

Today, China has an even greater desire to acquire such technology to enable its emerging military capabilities. The question remains whether the Obama administration’s policies, which have stressed increasing US exports and accommodating Chinese investment, will make it easier for China to achieve these goals.

The mainstream media have not considered the national security implications of technology transfer to China a priority issue. Only the concern during the Clinton administration about transfers benefiting China’s military and space capabilities led to “spiked” interest, which, before and after, remained at a low level. This is evident from The New York Times. This paper has demonstrated a willingness to report on these issues. It “got the scoop” on the Clinton administration’s mishandling of investigations of technology transfer to China and the need for reform before it was set out in detail by the Cox commission.

Yet a search of The New York Times database for articles with “China” “technology transfer” and “missile” in their contents averaged only 1.1 a year in the period between 1989 (Tiananmen Square) and 1997. The spike of the papers’ coverage of the Clinton-era technology transfers (7 articles a year average in 1998-99) was followed by a decline to 0.36 articles average a year in 2000-10. Removing the “missile” qualifier from the search terms produced results showing roughly the same pattern: an average of 4 articles per year in 1989-97, spiking at 8.5 in 1998-99, then going down to 3.1 in 2000-08. A change in this indictor – an increase to 14 in 2009, going back to 4 in 2010 – reflected the papers’ increased interest in the economic impact of Chinese efforts to secure technology transfer in such areas as civil aircraft, energy and high-speed rail, rather than the national security impact of technology transfers improving Chinese missile capability.

That the media have been more aware of the economic rather than the national security impacts of technology transfer to China but has not considered either of them a major story is suggested by a search of the Lexis news story database for the first two years of the Obama administration, which yielded 96 citations (less than one a week) for “China” and “technology transfer”. Adding the qualifier “missile” to the search reduced the total to 23.

[i] Helene Cooper, “Obama Sets Ambitious Export Goal”, The New York Times, 29 January, 2010, p. D1.

[ii] US National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, Select Committee, US House of Representatives, 1999, (Cox report), http://www.house.gov/coxreport/

David C. Isby is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.