America's Future Update on China

Update on China's Vaccines Imported into the U.S.A.

China is moving rapidly to take over the vaccine market. China boasts of 30 vaccine-producing companies that will soon be producing one billion doses a year. We wonder if U.S. parents are willing to inject their kids with Chinese vaccines. About 80% of the ingredients of all U.S. prescription drugs come from China or India. Chinese cough syrup killed 93 people in Central America in 2007. At least 81 U.S. deaths in 2008 were caused by Chinese-made Heparin, a blood thinner widely used in surgery.

An expert on Chinese health at the Council on Foreign Relations, Yanzhong Huang, explained the difference between Chinese and U.S. medicine safety. U.S. vaccines are kept safe by supporting institutions such as "the market economy, democracy, media monitoring, civil society, and a business ethics code," plus inspections and regulations, severe punishments for violators, and lawsuits by trial lawyers. China doesn't tolerate any of those safety precautions.

Update on China's Counterfeit Chips and Airbags

Chinese cheating is endangering our U.S. weapons system. The Senate Armed Services Committee reported that one million suspected "bogus parts" have been found in U.S. military aircraft, including the Air Force's largest cargo plane, special operations helicopters, and a Navy surveillance plane. This report describes a "flood of counterfeit parts" from China, which threaten our national security and the safety of our troops. Peter W. Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative, said that even the smallest counterfeit parts can cause a lot of trouble. The Senate Armed Services Committee reported that a faulty chip in a sensor on a Navy helicopter in the Pacific Fleet prevented the pilot from firing its missiles. Some counterfeit chips are designed to contain a "kill switch" that can shut down the military equipment.

Chips are not the only Chinese counterfeits. Thousands of U.S. motorists found their cars were installed with dangerous Chinese counterfeit airbags. Now these counterfeit airbags have to be replaced at the owner's expense. A government test found that some Chinese airbags don't inflate, and some shoot flames and shards of metal shrapnel instead of inflating.

Update on How China Uses Spies and Thieves

China has a large pool of potential spies among Chinese immigrants to the United States and among the unprecedented number of Chinese graduate students attending U.S. universities. Here is how China's spying and cheating works. DuPont had built a $17 billion-a-year industry selling a product called "Titanium white," which makes dozens of commonplace items white, from toothpaste to plastics to paint. China tried to buy the process from DuPont, but DuPont wouldn't sell its 70-year-old business. So the Communist Chinese just stole it, using a Chinese immigrant, Tze Chao, who worked for DuPont as an engineer. After his arrest, he explained that the Chinese, "in asking me to provide DuPont trade secrets to them, overtly appealed to my Chinese ethnicity and asked me to work for the good of the PRC."

A Chinese immigrant scientist named Kexue Huang, who held positions at both Dow Agro-Sciences and Cargill, stole their trade secrets and sent them to China to promote China's strategic science goals. He was caught and pled guilty.