America's Future Update on China

Update on China's Intentions

In a new book, Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States, experts Jed Babbin and Edward Timperlake say that China wants war with the United States in order to achieve superpower status - not a nuclear war or an all-out conventional war, but a fight they can win, such as taking over Taiwan.

The book raises the possibility of a cyber war. China is rapidly building the most advanced offensive computer war capability in the world with the goal of conquering America without firing a shot. China aims to do everything from disabling satellite networks to taking down our stock market and banking networks.

China encouraged North Korea to build nuclear weapons and to proliferate missiles and nuclear technology. China is creating an anti-U.S. axis with Latin American countries and building an alliance with radical Islam.

The authors say war with China is not a question of if, but when. We must invest in defenses against Chinese anti-satellite and cyber war weapons (which we now don't have). We need to realize that China is a major threat to the U.S., not merely a trading partner.

Update on Fraud in China

China's top computer scientist, Chen Jim, became a national hero in 2003 when he said he had created one of China's first digital signal processing computer chips, which are sophisticated microchips that can process digitized data for mobile phones, cameras and other electronic devices. On May 14, the Chinese government said it was all a fraud, that Chen had faked research and simply stolen his chip designs from a foreign company, then passed them off as his own. With a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Chen was considered one of China's brightest scientists. New York Times, 5-15-06

Other fraud cases in China have since been coming to light that reveal a deeply ingrained habit of plagiarism, falsification, and corruption that is widely recognized but not policed or punished. Christian Science Monitor, 5-16-06

The media reported the scary number that China produced 600,000 engineers in 2004. But that figure was based on provincial reports and the word "engineer" does not translate into many Chinese dialects. A Duke university study estimates half that number because half of what China calls engineers would be only technicians in the U.S. Washington Post, 5-21-06

Update on Chinese Espionage

In the first conviction under a 2004 anti-terrorism law aimed at preventing the spread of shoulder-fired and portable anti-aircraft missiles, a California man, Chao Tung Wu, pleaded guilty to trying to smuggle anti-aircraft missiles into the United States for $18,308,100. Court papers show that a Chinese general and state-run manufacturer were linked to the crime. The FBI undercover agent who exposed Wu said he offered to provide enough missiles "for a regiment" of soldiers. Washington Times, 4-24-06

The United States on June 13 prohibited all transactions with four Chinese companies and one U.S. company for allegedly helping Iran acquire weapons of mass destruction and missiles capable of delivering them. Associated Press, 6-13-06

A former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Ronald N. Montaperto, who held a security clearance as a China specialist, pleaded guilty to unlawful retention of national defense information, and admitted in a plea agreement to passing "top secret" and "secret" classified information to Chinese intelligence officials. Washington Times, 6-23-06