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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Report says China offered widespread help on nukes |
| 2008-08-30 |
| China gave Pakistan the blueprint for an atomic bomb, testing the finished product in 1990, and unveiled a sophisticated nuclear weapons complex to visiting U.S. scientists in the last decade, report former weapons lab officials. Former Air Force secretary Thomas Reed, a former weapons lab scientist, paints a portrait of China as a reckless distributor of nuclear weapons know-how in a report released Thursday in PhysicsToday magazine. He charges the Chinese with giving extensive weapons support to Pakistan in detail far beyond a 2001 Defense Department report that acknowledged such links. "The Chinese nuclear weapons program is incredibly sophisticated," Reed says. "The scary part is how much Pakistan has learned from them." The Chinese and Pakistani embassies in Washington did not reply to requests for comment on the report. Reed is the co-author with Danny Stillman, former Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory technical intelligence director, of a book coming out in January on the Chinese nuclear weapons program. Stillman sued the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense after they classified 23 of the book's pages, preventing their publication. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan upheld the classification last year. By interviewing Stillman on his 1990 trips to China and doing his own reporting, Reed says Physics Today avoided a similar classification review. Among his points: China detonated a neutron bomb on December 19, 1984. China gave Pakistan blueprints for a simple uranium atomic bomb in 1982 and later tested a Pakistani version of the weapon in China on May 26, 1990. France conducted underground nuclear weapons experiments, though not full-scale explosions, with China at the Lop Nur testing ground. Stephane Charreau, a press officer at the French Embassy in Washington, called the suggestion "very strange," and denied it. Some experts expressed similar skepticism. "I simply don't believe the French need the Chinese to do non-explosive testing. They have a very strong program and I can't see them exposing it to the prying eyes of the Chinese," says Peter Zimmerman, former chief scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "I think it is extremely unlikely that China tested a Pakistani bomb," he added. Harold Agnew, a former director of Los Alamos, confirmed that he and lab officials, including Stillman, had visited Chinese weapons facilities as early as 1981. "I believed they just wanted to show that they were competent. They were very open to me," he says in an e-mail. A spokesman for Los Alamos, Kevin Roark, called Stillman's 28-year role at the lab "minor." The report "is old news since it largely pertains to historical developments," says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. "On the other hand, it has important implications for our current understanding of China's nuclear program." |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #16 Conservatives, a lot of them, get China wrong a lot It's a variation of the Standard Oil, Millions of customers and lamp oil. With a Bible. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2008-08-30 20:41 |
| #15 b: Conservatives, a lot of them, get China wrong a lot. From what angle? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-08-30 20:31 |
| #14 I have to ditto what Tipper said. My new Chinese wife has opened my eyes about China. Conservatives, a lot of them, get China wrong a lot. There is definately something positive stirring in China. It may not fit in the current 24 hours news cycle and may be as interesting as positive news from Iraq, but there is some good going on in China. |
| Posted by: badanov 2008-08-30 19:40 |
| #13 JohnQC, I've sat on the banks of the Pearl River Delta and watched convoys of container ships passing by, heading to all parts of the world, The Americas, Europe, etc. I've gone through hundreds of villages, towns, cities and saw massive manufacturing in action, with no compulsion, it was all done of their own volition. No slavery involved, no colonialism, just voluntary trade.They appreciated the chance to export, and as far as I can see most people in the West appreciate being able to purchase goods at reasonable prices. I bought a TV recently for 1/3 the price that I paid for a similar one 30 years ago (that one only lasted 12 months before it blew up) The point I'm making is that whatever China is doing is positive. If we could get the lunatics in the 50 Muslim countries worldwide, to adopt a similar attitude, then we might probably have peace on Earth. |
| Posted by: tipper 2008-08-30 18:42 |
| #12 Let's hope that whatever China gave away was of the usual quality of $hit that we get from China--faulty and doesn't work. The last donk in power sold us out to China. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2008-08-30 17:03 |
| #11 JF: But assuming this is tactical thinking (and not the oriental hundred year strategy we sometimes read about), what lies behind such hostility? One reason might be a psychotic hatred of India for being the source of the opium that somehow uniquely weakened China even though opiates were legal and widely available in more potent forms (laudanum and cough syrup) worldwide, and weren't banned until the beginning of the 20th century. Another reason might be the presence of Indian units among the Western troops that chastised Imperial China for its occasional attacks on Western interests and massacres of Western nationals and Chinese Christians. A third one might be India's possession of what the Chinese considers Chinese territory, as well as Indian protection of the independent South Asian buffer states that China considers Chinese territory much like Tibet. Like I said, they're a bunch of psychotic megalomaniacs. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-08-30 15:53 |
| #10 Good point, John. I'm trying to remember if India was openly pro-Russia at that time. There was a period when Sino-Soviet relations were very tense ... could it have been at this time that China proliferated to Pakistan? |
| Posted by: lotp 2008-08-30 15:11 |
| #9 What a silly article. This is how the Pakies got their nuclear weapons, from Europe. |
| Posted by: tipper 2008-08-30 15:04 |
| #8 This proliferation took place in the 80s, when India didn't have computers, its economy was in the toilet (entire gold reserves shipped off to London), the memory of Indira Gandhi's emergency rule was fresh, it was racked by the insurgency in the Punjab and it didn't even have actual deliverable nuclear weapons. |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-08-30 14:57 |
| #7 India's a threat to the Chinese leadership if she successfully builds a diverse democratic nation that has technology-based economic growth. |
| Posted by: lotp 2008-08-30 14:50 |
| #6 But assuming this is tactical thinking (and not the oriental hundred year strategy we sometimes read about), what lies behind such hostility? India is certainly no threat to China - either economically, conventional military or nuclear - so what prompts such an act of proliferation? |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-08-30 14:48 |
| #5 JF: What drives such overtly malicious acts by China? These people are megalomaniac nutcases. They always talk a good game about thinking long term, but the actual reality is that they do incredibly stupid things that make sense to outsiders only if you realize that petulance and a relentless focus on the tactical is the only possible explanation for those deeds, rather than the usual Chinese mumbo-jumbo about strategic wisdom. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-08-30 14:31 |
| #4 Abu Uluque raises an interesting point. Providing Pakistan with nukes and missiles was an extraordinarily hostile act against India. What drives such overtly malicious acts by China? |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-08-30 14:14 |
| #3 I'm all about keeping a canyon between India and China. China is not, and will never be our friend (in my lifetime). China has only changed enough to suck in billions and billions of US dollars from the US consumer via Sam Walton's stores. They have in turned used a lot of those billions to buy US Treasury notes....which is a two-edged sword. India on the other hand, is our friend and has a cultural tie thanks to the Brits colonialism. They want to be our good friends, but are wary because of our GWOT support Pakistan. |
| Posted by: anymouse 2008-08-30 14:09 |
| #2 Chinese strategy seems to be to encircle and chip away at India. Dunno why they think they need to be so hostile. Maybe they don't like the competition over Himalayan nations like Tibet, Nepal and Katmandu. Dunno which way the prevailing winds blow in that part of the world. But it seems there would be some risk of China getting some fallout if India and Pakistan ever had an exchange. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2008-08-30 12:59 |
| #1 The article in Physics Today The Chinese nuclear tests, 1964–1996 |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-08-30 12:50 |