Don Feder
Corporate execs deliver body parts to Beijing
TREASON IS A CHARGE not to be made lightly. But how else would you describe revelations in The New York Times last week concerning the transfer of missile technology to China?
Loral Space and Communications, and Hughes Electronics are among the many American
corporations that are none too scrupulous in their dealings with the most loathsome regime
on earth.
Loral has been using the Chinese to launch its communications satellites. In February
1996, one of these launches crashed. To avert a similar disaster, scientists from the Loral
and Hughes studied the problem. Then, according to a Pentagon report, in violation of U.S.
law, the team shared its findings with the People's Republic.
The Times noted that this data gave the Chinese "critical assistance in improving the 
guidance systems of their rockets. The technology needed to put a commercial satellite in
orbit is similar to that which guides a long-range nuclear missile to its target." Like the
missiles a Chinese general threatened to lob at Los Angeles during the 1996 Taiwan
crisis?
Based on the Pentagon report, the Justice department started a criminal investigation. A
grand jury was impaneled to consider indictments.
Then, two month ago (in a move strongly opposed by Justice), the president foreclosed the
possibility of prosecution by authorizing Loral to export similar technology to China.
Not coincidentally, Loral's CEO, Bernard Schwartz, gave $421,000 to the Democratic Party
last year.
Like our aerospace industry, Bill Clinton has been profitably engaged in the China trade.
In 1996, Little Rock restaurateur Charlie Trie funneled more than $1 million to the Clinton
campaign from a group of Macao casino owners with ties to the People's Liberation Army.
Beijing bagmen, including Johnny Chung and John Huang, swarmed all over the White
House.
In return, the administration has approved an astounding array of exports to the People's
Republic, including, says the Center for Security Policy, "machine tools used to
manufacture advanced military aircraft, jet engines suitable for use in fighter aircraft and
cruise missiles ... and 46 supercomputers that have wound up in the Chinese
military-industrial complex."
The Oval Office stud-muffin personally lobbied Long Beach, Calif., officials to lease a
vacant naval base to the Chinese Overseas Shipping Company, which ships guns and
drugs overseas, among other cargo.
Which of these running dogs, the president or corporate America, is the top dog in the
pandering game is debatable.
Companies like Boeing have moved large parts of their assembly line to the Middle
Kingdom. It's common knowledge that the price of doing business in China is massive
technology transfers.
When Boeing president Philip Condit was asked how his company's business with Beijing
would affect its role as a key American defense contractor, he indifferently replied that "the
U.S. government will have to find ways of dealing with that."
That they are rushing to build a nation and a military that may be killing Americans early in
the next century concerns the China traders not in the least.
You don't need a cornea transplant to see it coming. The PRC isn't deploying advanced
intercontinental-range ballistic missiles to defend itself from Tibet. It isn't acquiring
long-range aircraft and a blue-water navy to deal with internal dissent.
America and China, the last two superpowers, are on an end-of-the-century collision
course. China's communist rulers view us as the only serious obstacle to the attainment of
their goals.
Their territorial ambitions aren't limited to Taiwan. At the very least, they intend to render the
United States incapable to exercising influence in Asia.
Beijing's Long March to Asian hegemony is sponsored by corporate America. China's trade
surplus with the United States ($157 billion between 1991 and 1997) makes its military
expansion possible. When it comes to sensitive dual-use technology in the possession of
U.S. firms, whatever China wants, China gets.
That corporate executives are willing to put profits before patriotism is understandable, if
deplorable. That the president of the United States is equally indifferent to national security
concerns is execrable.
In February, two Chinese were arrested in New York for trying to market the organs
harvested in Chinese prisons. It doesn't take much imagination to guess which of their body
parts the palace eunichs in corporate America have delivered to Beijing.
Mona Charen