PLA Catch-All
DOD’s 2005 report on China’s military power is actually pretty level-headed. I was expecting something more along the lines of the old Soviet Military Reviews, which routinely attributed astounding technical advances to the Soviets. The noise level in Washington over the yuan and CNOOC also led me to expect something more vociferous.
One development regarding China’s military that hasn’t gotten as much attention is a proposed Commerce Department regulation that would restrict U.S. high tech trade with China. In nonproliferation terms, this would be a “catch-all” rule for exports that could make a ‘significant’ contribution to the PLA. The export wouldn’t have to go directly to the PLA itself to be caught.
The catch-all was developed in the late 1980s in reaction to an episode where Iraq was buying a highly-specialized industrial tool for its WMD programs and the US found it had no way to stop the sale. The regulation implementing the catch-all is called the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative (EPCI), which gives the government the ability to stop any sale by a U.S. company when it thinks that the export might contribute to the proliferation of WMD. Companies hate EPCI, but it’s been used with restraint.
The U.S. already blocks military exports to China, so a new catch-all for the PLA would apply only to commercial goods. The scope of a catch-all might be more limited than EPCI, in that it might apply only to a list of high tech goods, but even this could still have a pretty broad reach, particularly as it would likely focus on commercial high tech products. The Chinese blame the trade imbalance on U.S. technology restrictions and say the catch-all will only make things worse, but this is nonsense. It’s not supported by the numbers, which suggest that U.S. exports to China would not increase very much if all sanctions were lifted.
Most people recognize that a catch-all won’t stop PLA modernization. China can’t make advanced weaponry, but while it tries to build a modern defense industry, it can buy from Russia. It also gets military technology from Israel and it would like to add Europe to its suppliers (and some Europeans would love to sell). The catch-all won’t affect the arms purchases that are the basis of China’s military modernization, although it raises the stakes for the EU if it tries again to lift its own arms embargo.
The catch-all might be aimed at Information Technology. China envies the U.S. military and is trying to duplicate the progress in information warfare/netcentric operations/C4ISR that is at the core of transformation. Since IT exports from Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Europe won’t be affected, it’s not clear how much benefit we’ll get from the catch-all, but we cannot dismiss the possibility of conflict with China as completely improbable. I still think its better to focus on making sure that the U.S. maintains technological leadership rather than worrying about how to slow Chinese economic growth.
Links to the report and a story on the catch-all.
Post a comment
The problem suggested here goes to the heart of the debate which is is the United States at War or not?
So far the only sacrafaces being made by Americans are by the men and women in uniform who have found themselves in either Afghanistan or Iraq. For the rest of American it is business as usual.
The American press thinks so little of the men and women in uniform they are now refering to them as "Mercenaries" because the Military is using cash bonuses to lure them into the Military or to encourage them to stay in.
The question you might ask what does this have to do with China?
Everything, example.
For the past year IBM has been trying to unload its PC business to a Chinese company named Lenovo. Lenovo as I'm sure most of you know is an offshoot of Legend Computer which is a wholy owned and operated arm of the PLA.
When last November the Dept. of Commerence had questions about transfering IBM's R&D facility in South Carolina in the deal, IBM said it was a minor operation that had yet to develope a chip that could operate in a Windows enviroment. To the Chinese it was a deal breaker. No deal with out what was going on in South Carolina.
Of course IBM argured that the sale of this divison was necessary in order to perserve stock holders equity and confidence of IBM stock by the market.
When the media inquired to both IBM and Lenovo what this unit was involved in neither side would say. Naturally the Commerace Dept. approved the deal.
The above is only an example of how China and the PLA are obtaining the techonlogy that they need to develope an "Information Based Military". The PLA has many parellel defense base programs that are running concurrent with those of the United States. How long can the United States maintain it's lead(?) if we keep letting Capitalistic Corporations sell the Communists the technology they need to compete militarly with the United States.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
"Stewart's Platoon"
Posted by: Byron Skinner at July 28, 2005 03:13 PM