America's Future Update on China

Update on National Security

U.S. intelligence has found that China’s military provided training for Afghanistan’s Taliban militia and elements of al Qaeda prior to 9/11, reports the Washington Times. The training of the Taliban forces was carried out in cooperation with Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency. U.S. Army Special Forces discovered 30 Chinese-made SA-7 surface-to-air missiles in southeastern Afghanistan. Other intelligence reports indicate the Chinese shipped missiles to the Taliban after 9/11. China Reform Monitor 452, 6-26-02

China is negotiating to buy eight new Russian submarines in a $1.6 billion deal in order to step up its ability to blockade Taiwan and challenge U.S. power in the Asia-Pacific region, reports the Washington Post. The deal is part of a $4 billion weapons package that Russia has committed to provide China over the next four to five years. China Reform Monitor 452, 6-26-02

China is rapidly strengthening its economic presence across Asia, gobbling up foreign investment and threatening the U.S. as Asia’s economic engine. China is rushing to buy up goods, parts and raw materials from its Asian neighbors. While the U.S. still is an essential trading partner for Asian countries, it is becoming less important because of China’s rise since it joined the World Trade Organization. Analysts predict we are seeing the beginning of an inescapable process of China replacing the U.S. as Asia’s dominant power. New York Times, 6-28-02

Update on History

President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 trip to Red China was preceded by a secret 1971 visit by his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger with China’s Prime Minister Chou En-lai. The New York Times reports that recently declassified U.S. government documents reveal that Kissinger offered Chou a radical shift in U.S. policy toward Taiwan in exchange for China’s help in arranging a unilateral U.S. pullout from Vietnam. Transcriptions of the secret discussions conducted in Beijing, obtained by the private research organization the National Security Archive, show that Kissinger wrote misleading accounts of these meetings in his published memoirs. The 41 documents giving the details of the meetings can be viewed on the National Security Archive website, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/. They include the transcript of the 7-9-71 meeting in which Kissinger pledged that the U.S. would not support independence for Taiwan.

During the first third of the meeting, Chou demanded that in order for relations to be established between the U.S. and China, the U.S. must recognize that Taiwan is "an inalienable part of Chinese territory that must be restored to the motherland." Kissinger pledged that the U.S. would withdraw 2/3rds of its troops from Taiwan when the Vietnam War was over. "As for the political future of Taiwan," Kissinger replied, "the political evolution is likely to be in the direction which Prime Minister Chou En-lai indicated." China Reform Monitor 433, 3-5-02

Update on Human Rights

China’s one-child-per-couple policy has created a demographic nightmare that is starting to threaten China’s stability and prospects for political freedom. The first wave of children born under this 20-year-old policy have now reached marriageable age. Over the next two decades, as many as 50 million young Chinese men won’t be able to marry because there aren’t enough wives. Growing numbers of lonely men will pose a threat to social order and could induce the Chinese bosses to tighten their grip on society or seek military conflicts to keep the restless bachelors busy. Because of the traditional Chinese preference for boys over girls, 117 Chinese boys were born for every 100 girls in 2000. A survey in one county reported that 36% of the abortions were performed to weed out daughters. USA Today, 6-19-02

Chinese demographers estimate that in some rural areas, 80% of children from ages 5 to 10 are boys. Time, 7-1-02

A 29-year-old Chinese mother, Wu Jingxia, was tortured to death in police custody leaving behind a 15-month-old baby. She was arrested in January for distributing fliers that exposed the human rights abuses against the Falun Gong and sent to a brainwashing class where torture is routine. Two days later, a notice of her death was sent to her family. Chinese policy is to report such deaths as suicide, but witnesses said she had been severely beaten and given intense electric-shock torture. www.faluninfo.net, 1-29-02