Wednesday May 26 5:09 PM ET
China has yet to field a weapon a decade after it allegedly stole design information from U.S. nuclear weapons labs, they say. Some of the information Beijing's spies collected is now declassified.
And in the world of nuclear strategy, a somewhat improved Chinese nuclear arsenal may actually add to superpower stability, these critics argue. They say if China has greater mobility and confidence in its weapons, it will have less worry of losing its arsenal to a first strike.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served two Republican presidents, cautioned Wednesday against overreacting to the espionage in a way that so demonizes China that it hurts U.S. relations.
He told senators that even with stolen U.S. nuclear secrets it would take China 15 years to develop the capacity to manufacture weapons.
"I am worried about the deterioration in our relations with China,'' Kissinger told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Such assessments of Chinese espionage have been overshadowed partly because Democrats and Republicans alike are anxious to position themselves as concerned and responsive to the perceived threat - though some Democrats have said predictions in this week's congressional report were written in a "worst-case fashion.''
Lost in the alarmist rhetoric on Capitol Hill is the fact that Tuesday's report that started it all is filled with conditional phrases: China "could'' or "may'' take detrimental actions "if the PRC decides to develop'' weapons it currently does not possess.
"The depiction of China as an impending nuclear nemesis just does not accord with the facts,'' said Robert Norris, a nuclear weapons expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an arms control and environmental organization.
Much of the report hinges on a prediction that China will soon test and field improved weapons based in part on secrets stolen from U.S. nuclear weapons labs. For example, China is developing a mobile DF-31 missile that the report says could be tested later this year and fielded in 2002.
"It's a 15-year-old weapons system already. It's never been tested,'' said Norris. "It may be tested this year. I think five years ago I said the same thing.''
Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., who chaired the House committee that wrote the report, said nothing was blown out of proportion.
"We did not engage in opinion. We reported only facts, and that is why we could agree with one another,'' Cox said.
One fact not in dispute is that the U.S. arsenal is vastly superior to Beijing's. China now has 20 single-warhead ICBMs capable of reaching North America. The United States has about 6,000 nuclear warheads that could reach China.
To field improved nuclear weapons with any confidence, China would have to conduct several explosive tests per weapon, said Daryl Kimble of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers.
But China has signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a pact about to be considered for ratification by the National Peoples Assembly. The treaty bans all nuclear testing, including underground.
Nonetheless, Kimble is concerned about how Chinese weapons modernization might harm regional stability, particularly the prospect that an expanding and improving Chinese arsenal could accelerate plans in India to deploy nuclear missiles.
An independent review panel established by the CIA also warned that Beijing may be more willing to sell more sophisticated weapons to such countries as Iran and Pakistan as its own arsenal improves.
But even the CIA damage estimate cautions that the agency could not tell how much of China's nuclear technology gains stemmed from stolen secrets rather than open scientific material.
And it added, "To date, the aggressive Chinese collection effort has not resulted in any apparent modernization of their deployed strategic force or any new nuclear weapons deployment.''
The FBI, meanwhile, has told lawmakers it has no evidence that classified nuclear weapons "legacy codes'' moved by an espionage suspect into an unsecured computer system were seen by any foreigner.
Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, said even if they were stolen, the codes - numerical representations of nuclear explosions - are of limited value.
Some of the information China allegedly received through espionage has since been declassified. In 1985 a U.S. scientist provided China with data on inertial confinement fusion lasers, technology that can be used in nuclear simulations. The Energy Department declassified the technology in 1993.