High-Tech Transfers To China Continue

Insight Mag . com ^ | July 8, 2002 | Zoli Simon

[dinok]

The Bush administration has been "as bad, if not worse" than the Clinton administration when it comes to the transfer of sensitive technologies to the People's Republic of China (PRC), claims Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan public-interest law firm. Fitton says the Bush administration even has "relaxed the rules put in place during the Clinton years." Specifically, he tells Insight, the administration has allowed the transfer of "computer technology [whose] only practical purpose is for nuclear-weapon design." Fitton says that from the beginning the administration went "full-speed ahead" with China trade and efforts to get the PRC into the World Trade Organization (WTO), which Fitton tells Insight only gives China more opportunities to modernize its military and "get cash" with which to buy high-tech weapons elsewhere.

While few have gone so far as Fitton with such complaints, criticism of U.S. transfers of sensitive technology to China is growing. Accuracy in Media, another Washington watchdog group, echoes Fitton on computer-technology transfers: "President Bush seems to have no clearer vision of what constitutes a strategically sensitive export than did Clinton. For example, Republicans harshly condemned Clinton for exporting high-performance computers to China, but President Bush has more than doubled the control threshold on these computers despite existing intelligence estimates that demonstrate how China's national security benefits from such acquisitions."

[dinok]

Ok you Bush lovers to the end, get your Purple coolaid out.

[SBeck]

Ok you Bush lovers to the end, get your Purple coolaid out.

Quit baiting them with common sense and facts, it only confuses them.

[Djarum]

BTTT

[BenLurkin]

What is the answer here?

[cva66snipe]

Well I doubt you'll hear too much on this. Strange as it seems you won't see the flame Larry Klayman crowd coming after this article. Paul Rodriguez runs a respectable place so they will ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist. When major conservative news sources start raising questions then that should raise eyebrows to something needing a further looking at. It's odd you will see the name Klayman used almost as a swear word in here by some yet the president of JW is Fitton whom I consider credible as well. I do think Bush is weak on China in trade, military, and knowledge exchanges. Why should China ever change when our elected POTUS from both parties will deliver what they ask for.

[UnBlinkingEye]

Why should China ever change when our elected POTUS from both parties will deliver what they ask for.

If you love our country and Constitution never vote for a Republicrat again.

[cva66snipe]

Well here's how I feel on that matter. I hope this links up.

Click here to get to the link

[CHUCKfromCAL]

Bush is just being realistic with computer exports. I used to work with SUN and I can tell you that the banned computers were getting shipped to China and Russia with no difficulty anyway. Companies in legal export countries would buy the equipment and then resell it to the banned countries.

The government was always giving SUN a hard time but there was nothing we could really do about it. The US trade restriction laws are not recognized and can't be enforced in many countries.

Besides, anyone with modest technical skills can put together clusters of off-the-shelf Linux PC-based clusters and make a supercomputer. These supercomputer clusters are cheap and excellent for intensive computation - like weapon design.

These trade restrictions are nothing more than "feel-good" BS. They may have had some value when you had to go to companies like CRAY to buy a super computer but not with today's technology.

[Tickle Me Pank]

Tough to say. It probably doesn't help that W's Unca Preston is Chair of the US-China CofC, or that GHW is an old China hand.....

[dinok]

It may not be inposible to stop the technology from getting to Chinese hands...but we are not supposed to make it easy. We arent talking about them making ships or tanks ... this is neuclear weapons we are talking about. Every day that it takes them to get a rocket to maker orbit , or a nuclear weapon to function is one day closer for us to get SDI to make all that obsolete. Come on ... this isn't hard to understand...

[Tailgunner Joe]