Eased Rules on Tech Sales to China Questioned

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: January 2, 2008

WASHINGTON — Six months ago, the Bush administration quietly eased some restrictions on the export of politically delicate technologies to China. The new approach was intended to help American companies increase sales of high-tech equipment to China despite tight curbs on sharing technology that might have military applications.

But today the administration is facing questions from weapons experts about whether some equipment — newly authorized for export to Chinese companies deemed trustworthy by Washington — could instead end up helping China modernize its military. Equally worrisome, the weapons experts say, is the possibility that China could share the technology with Iran or Syria.

The technologies include advanced aircraft engine parts, navigation systems, telecommunications equipment and sophisticated composite materials.

The questions raised about the new policy are in a report to be released this week by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, an independent research foundation that opposes the spread of arms technologies. MUCH MORE

Please note these comments written on Justanothercoverup on July 12th, 2006:

Footnote: It is also noteworthy to state that China is also the leader of industrial espionage in the United States. What they can’t buy - they steal, and the practice has been going on for years. Theft of Advanced Technology

This is an except from that link:

Theft of Advanced Technology

China’s official, government-sanctioned theft of advanced-technology intellectual property is another regular feature of China’s industrial policy. In late 2002, for example, Chinese engineers attempted to steal software and hardware secrets from Sun Microsystems, NEC Electronics Corporation, and Transmeta Corporation offices in California’s Silicon Valley.21

A year earlier, an agent apparently supported by the Chinese government stole industrial secrets from Lucent Technology and others. Among the files of the arrested Chinese engineers, FBI investigators discovered correspondence with the “National High-Technology Research and Development Program of China,” which revealed that a Chinese government “panel of experts” had determined that the engineers’ activities in the U.S. would have “a positive effect on development of China’s integrated-circuit industry” and had recommended that “every government department implement and provide energetic support.”22

In January 2001, U.S.-based Cisco Systems discovered that China’s government-controlled (if not state-owned) Huawei Technologies had illegally copied Cisco firmware and software for Huawei’s routers. Huawei had pirated vast swathes of Cisco software, with “hundreds of smoking guns” in the over 15 million lines of code, including exact matches with Cisco’s software–even Cisco’s software bugs, glitches, and misspellings. Moreover, when Huawei could not decode Cisco’s source codes, the company attempted to hire Cisco programmers to do it for them.23 In January 2003, Cisco sued Huawei in U.S. federal court, accusing Huawei of “pervasive and systematic” efforts to “steal and use Cisco’s technology,” and Huawei withdrew from the U.S. market.24

The Cisco case is only the tip of the iceberg. Other U.S. companies acknowledge that their Chinese joint venture partners and the Chinese government siphon off proprietary technology, trade secrets, and intellectual property, but they are reluctant to pursue the issue for fear that it will negatively affect their business standing in China. Apparently, the Chinese government’s preferred way of gaining access to U.S. advanced technology is via human sources, particularly students and technicians from U.S.-Chinese joint ventures in China who want to work in advanced-technology laboratories and production facilities in the United States.25 LINK

Read the full article, China and North Korea - Which poses the Greatest Threat? After you read it, it’s easy to see that this isn’t really news except that President Bush has thrown caution to the wind and will stop at nothing to secure his goals, and that includes compromising the national security of the United States.

William Cormier

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