The threat that blows from China - China as economic and military threat

National Review, March 20, 2000 by Mark Helprin

But here ideology is just a cover, for the real nature of American- Chinese relations is transactional. The famous description of the White House as a turnstile only serves the Clinton defense that access (which is what you get when you pass through a turnstile) is by its nature innocuous. Turnstiles are, after all, part and parcel of American politics. A more precise analogy would be to a store. In a store you pay money for something you can take home. That is the essence of the Clinton China policy.

Like his Meiji counterparts, Deng Xiaoping understood that the tools he wanted would have to be bought, borrowed, or stolen. Even before the 16-Character Policy, the father of China's ballistic-missile program- Lt. Gen. Qian Xuesen, M.A., M.I.T.; Ph.D., Cal Tech; Col., U.S. Army Air Force-left the U.S. in 1955 with four of his associates on the Titan Missile design team. This was the hors d'uvre. Now the expropriations were to be accomplished in earnest, according to the principles of "people's war," in which, just as guerrilla warfare can complement or supplant conventional military operations, massive numbers of intelligence gatherers from all segments of society work alongside but usually independently of professionals. Three thousand Chinese-government front corporations now operate in the United States, among them, according to the Cox Committee, "corporations set up outside the PRC by organs of the PRC government to funnel money to key U.S. leaders," and many others with links to the army and arms ministries. In 1996 alone, 80,000 Chinese citizens in 23,000 delegations visited the U.S. Despite case after case of theft and espionage, their access to defense contractors and the national laboratories is uncontrolled. Money men like Charlie Trie and James Riady provide serendipitous access, in their case to an ambitious southern governor whose obscure early contacts began to clarify once he moved into the White House. Though the net of go-betweens, bagmen, monks, nuns, and mules was exceedingly complex, it did not successfully cover the fact that the president and his party solicited and received millions of dollars in political contributions and other moneys (such as witness payoffs) from sources allied to, controlled, or funded by the Chinese government. For example, Col. Liu Chaoying (daughter of the vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission) and Ji Shengde, head of Chinese military intelligence, met with Johnny Chung in Hong Kong in the summer of 1996, giving him $300,000 that led to a meeting of Col. Liu and the president. Wang Jun (son of the late President Wang Zhen), an arms dealer, contributed $600,000 via Charlie Trie, and met with the president in the White House. One Mr. Wu, closely connected with the People's Liberation Army and Macao organized crime, funneled at least a quarter of a million dollars to the DNC through Charlie Trie, the president's friend from Little Rock. There were literally dozens of others with ties to China, its military, North Korea, and Chinese ministries and industries with interests in American technology. Each had money to contribute, and the thorough and energetic Mr. Clinton seems to have met every single one. They were armed not only with well laundered bank accounts but also, reportedly, with suitcases full of cash. Because of this, and because more than a hundred witnesses took the Fifth or fled, and because the White House and Justice Department have won the Olympic gold medal in omerta, what is known is obviously only the detritus that has floated up from a much greater, submerged enterprise that with complete impunity has corrupted the President of the United States and his closest associates.