U.S.-CHINA: Gun-smuggling case held unlikely to harm ties more

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, May 24 1996 (IPS) - The arrests in San Francisco this week of two officials of China’s state-owned arms companies on gun- smuggling charges have added to U.S.-Sino tensions.

The fact that one of the companies involved, Poly Technologies, is headed by the son-in-law of China’s top leader, Deng Xiaoping, is already being cited by some in the U.S. Congress as evidence that the smuggling was officially sanctioned.

“You can’t export as many as 2,000 weapons from China unless you have someone in the government going along with this,” said Charles Schumer, a senior Democrat on the House of Representatives Banking Committee. He told reporters the case could affect his support for maintaining U.S. trade benefits for China.

But U.S. officials insist that the seizure of 2,000 AK-47 automatic weapons — with a street value of four million dollars — should not have a significant impact on Sino-U.S. ties which have been bedevilled on a number of fronts in recent months.

“I don’t see why this needs to complicate U.S.-China relations at all,” State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns told reporters Thursday. “The fact is, there are American laws, and when those laws are broken, our government has an obligation to enforce (them). China, I think, would need to understand that.”

Senior officials say privately that the case, the result of a 16-month sting operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), will not have much of an impact.

“The fact is that the U.S. and China are getting along quite well, compared to two months ago, and this isn’t going to change that,” said one official.

One independent analyst, who has been harshly critical of the Clinton administration’s China policy, agreed with that assessment.

“I think the Chinese have made a decision to be cooperative through this election year,” said Robert Manning, an Asia specialist in the administration of former President George Bush.

On the other hand, he added, the smuggling operation “looks awful. There is a demonisation of China in this country, so every action like this reinforces that image,” said Manning, who is currently a senior fellow at the conservative Democratic thinktank, the Progressive Policy Institute.

Indeed, despite the administration’s reassuring words, the past year has witnessed a plunge in Sino-U.S. ties to their lowest level since 1973 when the two countries established de facto diplomatic relations.

The principal catalyst was last year’s decision by the Clinton administration to issue a visa for Taiwanese President Lee Teng- hui, an act which Beijing denounced as a violation of 25 years of U.S. pledges to recognise only one China. Beijing viewed Lee’s visit as an effort to advance Taiwanese independence.

The result was a series of ever-larger and more dangerous Chinese military exercises along the Taiwan Strait, culminating in missile exercises near Taiwan’s two largest ports as the island prepared to vote in its first direct presidential elections.

But Taiwan has not been the only problem between Washington and Beijing in the past year.

Washington has also charged China with violating non- proliferation agreements by exporting missile and nuclear technology to Pakistan and Iran; failing to protect U.S. intellectual property rights; behaving provocatively towards its neighbours in the South China Sea; and violating the human rights of ethnic minorities and dissidents.

Each dispute has been followed by demands, especially from right-wing Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, that the United States sanction Beijing and even adopt a strategy of “containment” towards China similar to that used by Washington against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The Clinton administration, however, has stuck to its policy of “comprehensive engagement” with China. A more hostile policy “would drive us back into a period of mutual isolation and recrimination that would harm America’s interests, not advance them,” Clinton said earlier this month when he extended ‘most- favoured-nation’ (MFN) trade status to Beijing into 1997.

Leading Republicans, including the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator Robert Dole, and House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, have, sometimes reluctantly, gone along. Both men have come out in support of MFN renewal, even though they say that Clinton should be tougher with Beijing on a range of issues.

The administration insists that it has been both prudent and tough. One official pointed to the dispatch of two U.S. aircraft carrier task forces near the Taiwan Strait during the Chinese missile exercises as a turning point in the relationship.

“They took notice,” he said. “It dispelled their assumptions that they could do anything, and the U.S. would just roll over.”

The same official, who asked not to be identified, also insisted that Beijing had taken seriously U.S. charges that China had violated a multilateral non-proliferation agreement by exporting ring magnets — which can be used in a nuclear-weapons programme — to Pakistan.

Washington suspended export credits for China until Beijing made a new commitment to abide by the accord earlier this month.

Officials also predict that Washington and Beijing will reach a new accord on U.S. intellectual property rights before mid-June when some two billion dollars in U.S. tariffs against Chinese exports are scheduled to take effect. “They know they need to do something,” said one official.

Manning agrees that there has been a turnaround. “In the near term, things are definitely better,” he said. “China clearly does not want to become a campaign issue during the rest of the election year.”

U.S.-CHINA: Gun-smuggling case held unlikely to harm ties more

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, May 24 1996 (IPS) - The arrests in San Francisco this week of two officials of China’s state-owned arms companies on gun- smuggling charges have added to U.S.-Sino tensions.
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