Tin Tình báo- Tin về tình hình quân sự ASEAN (P1)

U.S. Policy Change Toward Beijing
Posted June 26, 2003
By J. Michael Waller
President Bush may decide to keep his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, at arm?Ts length.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) is losing its hard-won image as a force for stability in Asia as key thinkers in and around the Bush administration are beginning to view it as a dangerous and often reckless power that is fomenting fear and instability. If this change sweeps through the government leadership like other recent paradigm shifts - for instance, the quickly spreading view that Saudi Arabia no longer is a stable force in the Middle East but a corrupt and unpopular financier of terrorism - Sino-American relations will be headed for the rocks. That's bad news for the Chinese Communist Party leadership and the U.S. and other companies that have built their fortunes on it.
The stakes are tremendous. Much of the U.S. economy now depends heavily on the Chinese status quo. The nature and aspirations of China's government could do to the region what the Soviet Union had done to many of its neighbors: combine subtle or actual threats and subversion with positive instruments of economics and diplomacy to intimidate or "Finlandize" the region in*****bmission.
In practically every category - from human rights to border disputes, weapons proliferation to terrorism, free navigation of the seas to control of satellite orbits in space - official Washington sees the unelected Chinese government as being more of a problem than a solution. This view is gaining acceptance in part because of the work of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan, congressionally chartered panel that issued its first report last year. It is preparing a follow-up under the chairmanship of former National Security Council official Roger W. Robinson (see "New Reports Detail the China Threat," Aug. 19, 2002).
Critics of the China skeptics say the PRC is militarily incapable of projecting its power and presents no short-term threat. A recent Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) study concludes, "The Chinese military is at least two decades behind the United States in terms of military technology and capability," and the advantage will "remain decisively in America's favor beyond the next 20 years" if U.S. military-acquisition and spending trends continue. However, even the CFR admits that its conclusions might be premature.
Military experts are paying attention. Richard Fisher, e***or of the Jamestown Foundation's China Brief and an adjunct Asia scholar at the Center for Security Policy, cre***s the CFR report with addressing current and potential Chinese threats, but says the conclusions are premised on faulty assumptions about the risks of predicting what Beijing will do and the means by which the PRC obtains high-tech assets to modernize its forces.
Advances in military hardware and communications aren't the only keys to the PRC's growing arsenal. Beijing has invested considerably in psychological coercion of other countries, preying on the fears of its smaller neighbors, subverting some from within through business deals and payoffs, and offering the carrot of trade deals, favorable loans and military cooperation. Its economic policy of building and selling weapons of mass destruction to any customer with enough cash has an added benefit, in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, of threatening the interests of its enemies - the United States and its European and Australasian allies, as well as emerging democratic rivals such as India. China has been a principal supplier of advanced technologies in communications, nuclear weapons and missiles for Iran, North Korea and the late Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq - the triad President George W. Bush calls the "Axis of Evil."
At the same time, Beijing calls itself an ally in the fight against weapons proliferation and terrorism, but with less and less credibility. A recent closed-door meeting of sinologists and defense experts in Washington underscored the evolving shift. "What has China done as an ally in the war on terrorists?" one participant asked. The rest looked at each other around the table. No one could think of a thing.
"They support our position on Xinjiang," quipped a participant, prompting a round of head-shaking and chuckling. Xinjiang province, whose ethnically Turkic population has been seething with resentment and resistance against Beijing's political, cultural and ethnic controls, is the site of strong, underground, anticommunist activity. For decades the central government harshly has repressed the Turkic peoples of Xinjiang, much as it has the conquered peoples of Tibet. But because the Xinjiang population is mostly Muslim, Beijing has tried to justify its repression in the name of fighting al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. Incredibly, the U.S. State Department voiced support for the PRC's get-tough approach in Xinjiang, prompting the ironic quip.
The Chinese leadership has used its "partner" status in the world war on terrorism to crack down even further on religious, political and social movements. According to Al Santoli, e***or of the American Foreign Policy Council's China Reform Monitor, "Beijing is using the war on terror as an excuse to imprison and execute political opponents and religious leaders," including underground Roman Catholic clergy, democracy activists and the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Even the State Department responded to this, at least expressing "deep concern" over the life sentence imposed on Wang Bingzhang last February, stressing that "the war on terrorism must not be misused to repress legitimate political grievances or dissent."
The sheer volume of evidence presents a damning indictment of the PRC as a fomenter of instability and fear, a purveyor of weapons of mass destruction to the world's most dangerous state-sponsors of terrorism, a supplier of nuclear-missile technology to the planet's most tense hot spots and a unilateral force committed to changing the world's political map. Analysts see Beijing pursuing a two-track strategy of sustained, low-level military pressure with positive inducements of trade, loans, development assistance and even security cooperation - which combined create a sense of fear and dependency on the part of China's neighbors.
A survey of countries shows the pattern that is causing some in Washington to reassess their perspectives about the PRC's role in the world.
Burma: Chinese support for the military junta in Burma, now known as Myanmar, is crucial to the survival of that diplomatically isolated regime. Beijing is seen as dominating the Burmese economy through massive infrastructure projects, large loans, debt forgiveness and the upgrading of naval port facilities and electronic intelligence outposts on the Bay of Bengal - prompting India to worry that China will use Burma to open up a "west coast" to the Indian Ocean.
Cambodia: Beijing is stepping up its military relations with Phnom Penh, has begun training Cambodian military officers and appears poised to replace the World Bank as a major lender to the Hun Sen government's programs. Beijing continues to oppose genocide trials for leaders of the former Khmer Rouge regime.
India: China's nuclear-weapons buildup, and its proliferation of nuclear-weapons and missile technology to Indian archenemy Pakistan, are among the reasons India is deploying a nuclear-missile arsenal of its own. "To tackle the situation today we must have the same strength that our neighbors have," Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes told reporters last fall. "China is not only economically stronger, but has conducted nuclear tests much before us. They are also well-armed. Pakistan's arrogance is because of China's backing."
Japan: China's new assertiveness in the context of its own nuclear-missile modernization and naval expansion, and its unrelenting support for North Korea's nuclear-missile program, have prompted Japanese leaders publicly to consider amending their constitution to allow building of an independent nuclear force.
Korea: Arguably the tensest hot spot in the world, the Korean peninsula remains divided, with the heavily militarized Communist regime in the north kept in power largely from PRC aid and technology. Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, sees Pyongyang capable of building a nuclear-missile force capable of striking Japan, U.S. military bases in Okinawa and Guam, and much of the Pacific. In recent months the North Korean government openly has threatened "war" against the United States and its allies, with Beijing alternating between obstruction and conciliation. Earlier this year the PRC blocked an attempt at the United Nations by the United States, Britain and France to condemn North Korea for selling weapons of mass destruction.
Pacific Islands: Small islands in the Pacific, so vital to the Allies in World War II and to U.S. national security today, are coming under increasing Chinese influence. The island nation of Kiribati, near the U.S. missile-defense testing site in Kwajalein, Marshall Islands, erupted in controversy in December 2002 when former president Ieremia Tabai accused the PRC of meddling in his country's elections. President Teburoro Tito, who was re-elected amid the scandal, had allowed the Chinese military to build a satellite base on the island, which intelligence sources say lets Beijing spy on U.S. missile-defense tests.
Philippines: Beijing calls for antiterrorism cooperation with Manila in the Asia-Pacific region, but it continues to occupy a Philippine reef it militarized in the South China Sea off Palawan province.
Singapore: This staunch U.S. ally, which recently completed port upgrades to host U.S. Navy warships, including aircraft carriers, announced it is withdrawing its military-training facilities in Taiwan and moving them to the PRC.
Sudan: Through oil deals and sales of military hardware, Beijing is propping up the Islamist regime in Khartoum, helping it to wipe out the country's Christian population in the south. Sudanese Christians and animists have been resisting government brutality in a civil war, driven in part by the regime's attempts to clear huge swaths of land to enable the state-owned PRC oil company, Petro China, to drill in a multibillion-dollar deal.
Taiwan: The PRC slowly is escalating the prospect of a military attack on Taiwan, maintaining the view that the independently governed island is a renegade province to be "reunited" with the mainland under Communist Party rule. Beijing continues to emplace CSS-5 and CSS-6 medium-range ballistic missiles within striking distance of Taipei. Through a combination of threats, business incentives and infiltration of Taiwan's new multiparty democracy, the PRC leadership works to squeeze the island country into an unwilling merger.
Thailand: Longtime ally Thailand is becoming more anti-American and pro-Beijing. The Bangkok newspaper Matichon recently accused the Thai government of moving closer to the PRC and Burma, while acting "as though the U.S. is an adversary." The paper observes, "Through the government's propaganda campaign, the Thai public is led to believe that the United States is bent on taking advantage of Thailand. ... Since we hate the United States [according to government logic], we now turn to another superpower, China."
Venezuela: Beijing finds a new Latin American friend in the regime of Col. Hugo Chavez, the anti-U.S. strongman who fancies himself a 21st century Simón Bolívar. U.S. defense sources tell Insight that, following the withdrawal of American Special Forces trainers from Venezuela, Chavez invited China to send in about 100 special-operations experts to train his army.
Pentagon officials tell this magazine that other trends also worry U.S. strategists. Beijing continues to make illegal, unilateral claims on international waters that threaten freedom of navigation, specifically in the South China Sea. Despite the near-constant presence of U.S. military aircraft to show a commitment to freedom of the waters in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese military continues aggressively to attempt interceptions of reconnaissance aircraft, similar to that which provoked the May 2001 incident that forced down a U.S. Navy EP-3 plane and its crew.
Chinese ambitions to challenge U.S. domination of space are another worry at the Defense Department. Fisher, author of a forthcoming book on the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), attended the recent Zuhai Air Show and saw the exhibition of three new solid-fueled space-launch vehicles he says "are intended to form the basis for a direct-ascent antisatellite ballistic missile and the DF-31 intercontinental ballistic missile." Combined with miniature antisatellite weapons the PLA already has developed, and an emerging doctrine to blind the United States by destroying key satellites in the event of a conflict, the development has U.S. planners fearful of a threat against which the United States has no defense. "If the PLA is able to disable or destroy enough critical U.S. military satellites," Fisher says, the "20-year [U.S.] technical advantage would be rapidly diminished."
Meanwhile, U.S. counterintelligence sources say Beijing's extremely aggressive espionage operations continue unabated. "The Chinese remain fully focused on collecting intelligence on all aspects of American political, economic, industrial and military technology, and maintain a host of political-warfare capabilities in place to limit the U.S. ability to respond," one official says. U.S. counterintelligence remains in disarray over the disclosure of major Chinese penetrations of the FBI, in which an alleged PRC agent maintained affairs with two FBI agents on behalf of Beijing's spy service. The case against the alleged spy and the two former agents now is in federal court.
Beijing's "long-term strategic objective is to drive American bases and influence out of the Pacific region and to exercise hegemony over it," according to Australia-based sinologist Peter Zhang. "I wrote those words nearly four years ago," he said in a recent essay for the New Australian. "Since then events in the region have only strengthened my assessment."

New Reports Detail The China Threat
July 29, 2002
By J. Michael Waller
Media Cre***: Win McNamee/Reuters
Should Bush revise U.S. policy on Beijing in light of the Pentagon and China Commission reports?

The Bush administration's ambiguous China policy got a kick in the pants recently when the Pentagon and the bipartisan, congressionally chartered U.S.-China Security Review Commission issued separate reports describing Beijing's looming military threat to U.S. national interests. Both reports ?" mandated by Congress at the end of the Clinton era to evaluate China's growing military power ?" ratified the long-stated views of U.S. national-security analysts that Beijing has been using cash from American consumers and investors to bankroll an ambitious military buildup that ultimately may be used to attack the United States.
Both reports begin by warning that the United States has a poor understanding of the Chinese military and Beijing's intentions because intelligence and analysis on China is sketchy. And that alone is sending shock waves through the foreign-policy, defense and intelligence establishments.
"The Pentagon report specifically, but the China Commission report as well, question a key tenet upon which America's peaceful relations with China have been based since the early 1970s," says Richard D. Fisher, a China military expert with the Jamestown Foundation. "The fundamental tenet being that America expects China to peacefully settle its differences with Taiwan. This expectation is included in two of the major communiqués between the United States and China, and is enshrined as policy in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. The Pentagon has very likely started a major debate within the U.S. government by questioning for the first time China's willingness peacefully to resolve its differences with Taiwan."
That's a big development. Neither report says it explicitly, but both issue observations and conclusions that bury the argument of the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations that the "People's Republic [of China] is our partner." Political shenanigans on the China Commission, and fears in some quarters of the present presidential administration that the Pentagon report would offend Beijing, made supporters of the missions of these reports fear that neither would be objectively written or, if they were, that they ever would see the light of day.
The Communist Chinese government has complained loudly. In his first Washington news conference, Chinese Embassy spokesman Xie Feng actually accused the Pentagon and the congressional commission of lying, warning that the reports could endanger bilateral relations and world peace. Claimed Xie, "The threat to Sino-U.S. relations, the threat to world peace, doesn't lie in China but rather in these people who have fabricated this China threat."
The Pentagon report meanwhile is the product of intense wrangling between two strains within the Department of Defense (DoD). These are the go-along-to-get-along attitude of some of the "Clintonized" flag officers and research institutes (see "Clinton Undead Still Haunt Pentagon," June 17), and the more real-world policy shop led by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith. Administration sources say the National Security Council held up its publication for half a year.
The DoD report smashed the conventional wisdom that China would be far from able to conquer Taiwan. "Previously, the whole debate over the threat to Taiwan had been cast through the lens of whether the PLA [People's Liberation Army] could invade or not invade," Fisher says. "This was always a straw-man argument because nobody would ever take seriously the prospect of an all-out, D-Day-style invasion, so the liberal side of the argument would always discount the threat to Taiwan. The Pentagon report does a great service by introducing the notion of the PLA's development of a range of coercive strategies and military options to use against Taiwan. There are operations, short of an all-out invasion, that are designed to produce a political outcome, such as a surrender by Taiwan's leaders after a rapid, two- to three-day blitzkrieg assault."
For the first time, an official U.S. government policy document states that Beijing's military buildup against Taiwan presents a threat to U.S. allies in the region. The Pentagon report says, "The PRC's ability to exercise coercive military options presents challenges not only to Taiwan but also to other potential adversaries, such as the Philippines and Japan." Fisher notes, "This is the first time any U.S. government statement has cast China's military as a threat to the region, much less as a threat to U.S. allies in particular."
The report also crystallizes a growing concern about Russia's massive weapons proliferation to China (see "PRC Arms Itself to Wage War on U.S.," Aug. 12). "The Pentagon's emphasis on the degree to which Chinese-military modernization stems from Russian assistance is indicative of the administration's emerging focus on the Russia-China strategic relationship," says Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council. "This is definitely a positive development."
"I thought it exceeded expectations," Fisher says. "Knowing about the degree of dissension among the members of the China Commission, it was a pleasant surprise. It produced useful and solid observations and recommendations."
Congress created the commission at the instigation of national-security conservatives a year after requiring the Pentagon's annual reports on Chinese military power, at the end of Clinton's term in 2000. The idea was to get the White House and the public to confront "the national-security impacts of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between" the United States and China. Congress, according to a commission document, "wanted the commission to evaluate whether our economic policies with China harm or help United States national security and, based on that assessment, to make recommendations in those areas that will improve our nation's interests" in regular annual reports.
It seemed the commission would remain in security-oriented hands until liberal Republican Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont defected and kicked the Senate to Democratic control. That put Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) in control of much of the commission's staffing. Famous for channeling taxpayer money to his home state and to his friends, Byrd promptly installed old cronies at top levels of the commission staff. These included longtime staffer C. Richard D'Amato, who had no public record of expertise on China but who had just wrapped up work with another congressional commission, that one on the trade deficit. D'Amato became commission chairman, with Republican Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute as vice chairman.
Congressional sources tell Insight that the Democratic majority pushed many conservative commissioners aside ?" even the only recognized academic sinologists among them ?" and allied with Chamber-of-Commerce-type Republicans who tended to place commercial interests ahead of national security. They doled out research and writing grants to few specialists considered tough on China.
Commission leaders even shortened the organization's name to "U.S.-China Commission," taking out the words "Security Review" ?" an illegal act, some insiders cautioned, since the name was spelled out by federal law. Commission letterhead, staff business cards, the Website banner and even the site address (www.uscc.gov) all reflected the soft-soap name change.
Yet somewhere along the way, as experts wrote studies and provided testimony, the facts fell into place. Human-rights and labor concerns of liberals found fertile ground among the national-security-minded conservatives and vice versa. Remarkably, the widely bipartisan group of 12 commissioners, with just a single exception, found what many more-assertive analysts had argued all along. Their final product became a primer for a broad-based rethinking of how the United States should deal with China's regime.
The commissioners wrote that U.S. intelligence collection and analysis on China continues to be poor; that U.S. leaders have a "limited understanding" of Chinese official goals because "the U.S. government has dedicated insufficient resources to collect, translate and analyze Chinese writings and statements"; that "attempts to build crisis-management and confidence-building measures between the United States and China have failed"; that Beijing "sees the United States as a hegemonic power" and a "superpower in decline"; that the PRC "is dedicating considerable resources toward preparing for potential conflict with the United States, especially over Taiwan"; and Chinese leaders believe that, "despite overwhelming U.S. military and technological superiority, China can still defeat the United States by transforming its weakness into strength and exploiting U.S. vulnerabilities through asymmetric warfare, assassin's-mace weapons, deception, surprise and pre-emptive strikes."
The sole dissenting commissioner was William A. Reinsch ?" a former Clinton undersecretary of commerce and now a business lobbyist who has pushed for relaxing or lifting sanctions against rogue nations such as Iraq, the Sudan and Cuba that have been identified by the State Department as terrorist regimes. Reinsch complained, "The commission majority has bent over backward to avoid describing the Chinese as a 'threat'; yet the belief that they are permeates every chapter" of the report. Reinsch's dissent thus underlined the commission's accomplishment.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commissioner Waldron's Grave Warning
Commissioner Arthur Waldron, a professor of international relations at the University of Pennsylvania and a key figure in shaping the U.S.-China Security Review Commission report, wrote an addendum offering his own concerns to expand on the document's final draft:
"The wide-ranging purpose of China's military buildup must be recognized. It is not a response, as is sometimes suggested, to U.S. support for Taiwan and other Asian friends. Rather, the buildup should be understood as aimed at excluding the U.S. from Asia, and establishing the ability to threaten and coerce neighboring states ranging from Mongolia to Japan to India. This conclusion is supported not only by evidence of China's capabilities, but also widely available statements of Chinese intent. If Taiwan did not exist, today's China would still pose serious security issues to all Asian states.
"Money gained through trade with the U.S. must not be permitted to strengthen China's military and security apparatus. Current measures are entirely inadequate. A massive strengthening of counterintelligence is required; scrutiny must be imposed on Chinese access to U.S. capital markets, with real sanctions. U.S. companies should be forbidden to do business with army and security-related Chinese entities. Foreign companies helping China's military and security apparatus ? should be denied any participation in U.S. government procurement or development programs.
"With respect to China's proliferation behavior, we have all the evidence we need: China is a major source of advanced weapons to terrorist-sponsoring and other dangerous states. What is required is firm action.
"Far more work is required, both from the commission and from government, on China's role (or lack of role) in international terrorism. Beijing's close connections to terrorist-sponsoring states provide ample reason for concern. ?
"U.S. intelligence operations with respect to China are inadequate and often misguided. Thorough reform is required, along the lines suggested by the Congressionally-mandated Tilelli report, which the CIA did not implement."

New Reports Detail The China Threat
July 29, 2002
By J. Michael Waller
Media Cre***: Win McNamee/Reuters
Should Bush revise U.S. policy on Beijing in light of the Pentagon and China Commission reports?

The Bush administration's ambiguous China policy got a kick in the pants recently when the Pentagon and the bipartisan, congressionally chartered U.S.-China Security Review Commission issued separate reports describing Beijing's looming military threat to U.S. national interests. Both reports ?" mandated by Congress at the end of the Clinton era to evaluate China's growing military power ?" ratified the long-stated views of U.S. national-security analysts that Beijing has been using cash from American consumers and investors to bankroll an ambitious military buildup that ultimately may be used to attack the United States.
Both reports begin by warning that the United States has a poor understanding of the Chinese military and Beijing's intentions because intelligence and analysis on China is sketchy. And that alone is sending shock waves through the foreign-policy, defense and intelligence establishments.
"The Pentagon report specifically, but the China Commission report as well, question a key tenet upon which America's peaceful relations with China have been based since the early 1970s," says Richard D. Fisher, a China military expert with the Jamestown Foundation. "The fundamental tenet being that America expects China to peacefully settle its differences with Taiwan. This expectation is included in two of the major communiqués between the United States and China, and is enshrined as policy in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. The Pentagon has very likely started a major debate within the U.S. government by questioning for the first time China's willingness peacefully to resolve its differences with Taiwan."
That's a big development. Neither report says it explicitly, but both issue observations and conclusions that bury the argument of the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations that the "People's Republic [of China] is our partner." Political shenanigans on the China Commission, and fears in some quarters of the present presidential administration that the Pentagon report would offend Beijing, made supporters of the missions of these reports fear that neither would be objectively written or, if they were, that they ever would see the light of day.
The Communist Chinese government has complained loudly. In his first Washington news conference, Chinese Embassy spokesman Xie Feng actually accused the Pentagon and the congressional commission of lying, warning that the reports could endanger bilateral relations and world peace. Claimed Xie, "The threat to Sino-U.S. relations, the threat to world peace, doesn't lie in China but rather in these people who have fabricated this China threat."
The Pentagon report meanwhile is the product of intense wrangling between two strains within the Department of Defense (DoD). These are the go-along-to-get-along attitude of some of the "Clintonized" flag officers and research institutes (see "Clinton Undead Still Haunt Pentagon," June 17), and the more real-world policy shop led by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith. Administration sources say the National Security Council held up its publication for half a year.
The DoD report smashed the conventional wisdom that China would be far from able to conquer Taiwan. "Previously, the whole debate over the threat to Taiwan had been cast through the lens of whether the PLA [People's Liberation Army] could invade or not invade," Fisher says. "This was always a straw-man argument because nobody would ever take seriously the prospect of an all-out, D-Day-style invasion, so the liberal side of the argument would always discount the threat to Taiwan. The Pentagon report does a great service by introducing the notion of the PLA's development of a range of coercive strategies and military options to use against Taiwan. There are operations, short of an all-out invasion, that are designed to produce a political outcome, such as a surrender by Taiwan's leaders after a rapid, two- to three-day blitzkrieg assault."
For the first time, an official U.S. government policy document states that Beijing's military buildup against Taiwan presents a threat to U.S. allies in the region. The Pentagon report says, "The PRC's ability to exercise coercive military options presents challenges not only to Taiwan but also to other potential adversaries, such as the Philippines and Japan." Fisher notes, "This is the first time any U.S. government statement has cast China's military as a threat to the region, much less as a threat to U.S. allies in particular."
The report also crystallizes a growing concern about Russia's massive weapons proliferation to China (see "PRC Arms Itself to Wage War on U.S.," Aug. 12). "The Pentagon's emphasis on the degree to which Chinese-military modernization stems from Russian assistance is indicative of the administration's emerging focus on the Russia-China strategic relationship," says Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council. "This is definitely a positive development."
"I thought it exceeded expectations," Fisher says. "Knowing about the degree of dissension among the members of the China Commission, it was a pleasant surprise. It produced useful and solid observations and recommendations."
Congress created the commission at the instigation of national-security conservatives a year after requiring the Pentagon's annual reports on Chinese military power, at the end of Clinton's term in 2000. The idea was to get the White House and the public to confront "the national-security impacts of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between" the United States and China. Congress, according to a commission document, "wanted the commission to evaluate whether our economic policies with China harm or help United States national security and, based on that assessment, to make recommendations in those areas that will improve our nation's interests" in regular annual reports.
It seemed the commission would remain in security-oriented hands until liberal Republican Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont defected and kicked the Senate to Democratic control. That put Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) in control of much of the commission's staffing. Famous for channeling taxpayer money to his home state and to his friends, Byrd promptly installed old cronies at top levels of the commission staff. These included longtime staffer C. Richard D'Amato, who had no public record of expertise on China but who had just wrapped up work with another congressional commission, that one on the trade deficit. D'Amato became commission chairman, with Republican Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute as vice chairman.
Congressional sources tell Insight that the Democratic majority pushed many conservative commissioners aside ?" even the only recognized academic sinologists among them ?" and allied with Chamber-of-Commerce-type Republicans who tended to place commercial interests ahead of national security. They doled out research and writing grants to few specialists considered tough on China.
Commission leaders even shortened the organization's name to "U.S.-China Commission," taking out the words "Security Review" ?" an illegal act, some insiders cautioned, since the name was spelled out by federal law. Commission letterhead, staff business cards, the Website banner and even the site address (www.uscc.gov) all reflected the soft-soap name change.
Yet somewhere along the way, as experts wrote studies and provided testimony, the facts fell into place. Human-rights and labor concerns of liberals found fertile ground among the national-security-minded conservatives and vice versa. Remarkably, the widely bipartisan group of 12 commissioners, with just a single exception, found what many more-assertive analysts had argued all along. Their final product became a primer for a broad-based rethinking of how the United States should deal with China's regime.
The commissioners wrote that U.S. intelligence collection and analysis on China continues to be poor; that U.S. leaders have a "limited understanding" of Chinese official goals because "the U.S. government has dedicated insufficient resources to collect, translate and analyze Chinese writings and statements"; that "attempts to build crisis-management and confidence-building measures between the United States and China have failed"; that Beijing "sees the United States as a hegemonic power" and a "superpower in decline"; that the PRC "is dedicating considerable resources toward preparing for potential conflict with the United States, especially over Taiwan"; and Chinese leaders believe that, "despite overwhelming U.S. military and technological superiority, China can still defeat the United States by transforming its weakness into strength and exploiting U.S. vulnerabilities through asymmetric warfare, assassin's-mace weapons, deception, surprise and pre-emptive strikes."
The sole dissenting commissioner was William A. Reinsch ?" a former Clinton undersecretary of commerce and now a business lobbyist who has pushed for relaxing or lifting sanctions against rogue nations such as Iraq, the Sudan and Cuba that have been identified by the State Department as terrorist regimes. Reinsch complained, "The commission majority has bent over backward to avoid describing the Chinese as a 'threat'; yet the belief that they are permeates every chapter" of the report. Reinsch's dissent thus underlined the commission's accomplishment.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commissioner Waldron's Grave Warning
Commissioner Arthur Waldron, a professor of international relations at the University of Pennsylvania and a key figure in shaping the U.S.-China Security Review Commission report, wrote an addendum offering his own concerns to expand on the document's final draft:
"The wide-ranging purpose of China's military buildup must be recognized. It is not a response, as is sometimes suggested, to U.S. support for Taiwan and other Asian friends. Rather, the buildup should be understood as aimed at excluding the U.S. from Asia, and establishing the ability to threaten and coerce neighboring states ranging from Mongolia to Japan to India. This conclusion is supported not only by evidence of China's capabilities, but also widely available statements of Chinese intent. If Taiwan did not exist, today's China would still pose serious security issues to all Asian states.
"Money gained through trade with the U.S. must not be permitted to strengthen China's military and security apparatus. Current measures are entirely inadequate. A massive strengthening of counterintelligence is required; scrutiny must be imposed on Chinese access to U.S. capital markets, with real sanctions. U.S. companies should be forbidden to do business with army and security-related Chinese entities. Foreign companies helping China's military and security apparatus ? should be denied any participation in U.S. government procurement or development programs.
"With respect to China's proliferation behavior, we have all the evidence we need: China is a major source of advanced weapons to terrorist-sponsoring and other dangerous states. What is required is firm action.
"Far more work is required, both from the commission and from government, on China's role (or lack of role) in international terrorism. Beijing's close connections to terrorist-sponsoring states provide ample reason for concern. ?
"U.S. intelligence operations with respect to China are inadequate and often misguided. Thorough reform is required, along the lines suggested by the Congressionally-mandated Tilelli report, which the CIA did not implement."

He he, tớ có cái tin này nè, gửi các bác đọc chơi cho dzui dzẻ. Bác nào có thể thì xác nhận lại tin này giùm. Nếu điều này là đúng thì quả là tin mừng lắm lắm

Bác ơi, đấy cũng là một cái forum ấy mà, tin tức trong ấy làm sao tin được, tôi xoá đi để bà con đỡ tò mò
Được Condor sửa chữa / chuyển vào 00:09 ngày 08/07/2003
u?c RandomWalker s?a vo 01:35 ngy 08/07/2003

He he, tớ có cái tin này nè, gửi các bác đọc chơi cho dzui dzẻ. Bác nào có thể thì xác nhận lại tin này giùm. Nếu điều này là đúng thì quả là tin mừng lắm lắm

Bác ơi, đấy cũng là một cái forum ấy mà, tin tức trong ấy làm sao tin được, tôi xoá đi để bà con đỡ tò mò
Được Condor sửa chữa / chuyển vào 00:09 ngày 08/07/2003
u?c RandomWalker s?a vo 01:35 ngy 08/07/2003

Hì hì, cái này tớ đọc thấy hay hay thì đưa lên cho anh em coi thôi, bác RandomWalker có xóa cũng chẵng sao, nhưng tớ nghĩ thông tin này cũng ít nhiều cũng có thể tham khảo vì order của Malaysia 18 chiếc Su-30MKI nêu trong này cũng đã được thực hiện. Tớ sẽ thử tra trên mạng về order của các nước khác để xem thông tin có độ tin cậy cở nào.

Hì hì, cái này tớ đọc thấy hay hay thì đưa lên cho anh em coi thôi, bác RandomWalker có xóa cũng chẵng sao, nhưng tớ nghĩ thông tin này cũng ít nhiều cũng có thể tham khảo vì order của Malaysia 18 chiếc Su-30MKI nêu trong này cũng đã được thực hiện. Tớ sẽ thử tra trên mạng về order của các nước khác để xem thông tin có độ tin cậy cở nào.

2 bài dưới đây là của bác tande post về tư liệu phân tích tình hình quốc tế em xin đưa vào đây để cho chủ để thêm sôm tụ và tránh loãng chủ đề.
How China's Propaganda Machine Works
Joan Maltese
Special for NewsMax.com
Friday, July 4, 2003
It's the tail end of the graveyard shift in a newsroom in Beijing. Abandoned glasses of shrubby teas stand among the computer terminals, looking like biology experiments. As the on-duty Foreign Expert at China Central Television's English-language news channel, I am tapping out the headlines for the 8 a.m. broadcast, which have been carefully chosen and sequenced by the director and producer. As for me, I'm well versed in the verbiage the censor will require. Accordingly, I write:
Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao delivers an important speech on how to continue using agriculture to build an all-around well-off society.
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Chairman Li Ruihuan says Macao has witnessed social stability and sustained economic expansion since it returned to the mainland's umbrella.
Plane crashes in Turkey and the U.S. kill 96.
That wraps up 8 a.m. I click the Submit button and go for a walk through the silent halls and cells of the CCTV-9 news offices, trying not to disturb the 50 percent of the staff who are sound asleep.
This is the headquarters of a national news service reaching millions of households in China, plus satellite subscribers in Britain and France, and Fox cable satellite subscribers in selected U.S. cities. The Fox cable deal prompted several changes, including expansion to 24-hour coverage, because it is a hopeful spearhead into the global media market. "Your first window on China," goes our motto. "China's best foot forward," is the unofficial strategy.
You'd think the place would be noisy and busy, even with the graveyard staff winding down. Phones ringing, e***ors needling for an exact quotation, the director pressing the techies to make sure the links are up for a live interview. But not at CCTV-9 - not now, nor on the evening news shift with North Korea and Iraq both on the brink of war and the Columbia space shuttle just blown up with its crew.
With the exception of a handful of mostly upbeat field reports and the government-issue propaganda, our news all comes from wire services. Pull it off the computer, shape it *****it the party line, and shunt it off to the censor, at least one of whom is onsite around the clock. No communication with remote bureaus or foreign-based reporters, no exclusives, no contacts, no fussing with time differences, no pressure. It's a good place to catch up on your sleep.
China Central Television is the state-controlled television broadcast service. It falls under the authority of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and has suffered the attention of the Chinese leader himself.
"Jiang Zemin, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, yesterday called on the country's mass media to create a 'sound atmosphere' for the Party's upcoming congress," began a front-page item in an August 2002 issue of the China Daily, the government's English-language propaganda sheet. China's media were so obedient to this call that what should have been rival organizations were giving each other plugs. "China's leading newspaper," began a CCTV-9 broadcast just before the congress, "the People's Daily, will run an e***orial Friday hailing the opening of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party in Beijing. . The e***orial also notes that the thought of [Jiang Zemin's] "Three Represents" has provided fundamental answers to vital questions.[1]
To add another level of incest, the source for the CCTV-9 item was Xinhua, China's official news agency. (Is anyone trying to scoop anyone here? Is anyone watching his rival's every comma to expose untruths? Does anyone risk losing audience to the competition for peddling pap?)
Closer to the ground, it's harder to tell who's in charge of what exactly or how everything fits together. There is no organizational chart available to employees at CCTV-9, no roster or handbook or HR department or company newsletter or all-hands meetings or any other formal means of acquainting employees with the organization they work for. Language barriers in the newsroom go largely unaddressed. Changes come down from management like thunderbolts. The budget is opaque, although it is known that salaries for Chinese staff are routinely five months in arrears.
China's Larry King
If you're not one of our satellite subscribers outside China, you can go to cctv-9.com and watch our broadcasts to get an idea of why we're here. China has opened up and reformed! Our news shows look just like yours! We have actual anchors who wear neckties! (Another channel, CCTV-12, has an interview set so similar to Larry King's that it's probably some sort of copyright infringement.)
One thing management has provided is a mission: to make our employer, the central government, look good.
That's why "Your first window on China" always affords a sunny view. When a British tourist was murdered near the Great Wall, CCTV-9 knew nothing about it. When the police shut down all the Internet cafes in Beijing, our coverage never questioned the party line that it was for safety reasons. When Falun-Gong-hunting cops raided my hostel one winter midnight, putting dozens of foreign backpackers and workaday Chinese out on the street without a moment's notice, CCTV-9 staffers were amused and sympathetic, but there was no coverage. When a group of North Koreans made a dramatic break into the Spanish embassy in Beijing that was played repeatedly on CNN, you never heard a word from us.
I went down to the Spanish embassy that afternoon in March 2002 and found Beijing's small community of real journalists. Reuters, CNN, Hong Kong's Phoenix, the BBC - everyone was there except "Your first window on China."
When an enterprising intern who also worked as a translator and interpreter wanted to do an expos頯n China's woefully unsupervised translation and interpretation business, she was told to forget it. "Why would you want foreigners to know about this problem?" demanded those in charge. The irony seems lost on them that this method of making China look good is simply exposing the country as a joke.
So they're especially stone-faced when someone within the ranks refuses to deliver the punch line. We had a business reporter exceptional by any standards who kept implicitly asking: "But what is China reforming from? Never mind all the self-praise for digging ourselves out; how did we get into this hole in the first place?"
When she finally quit CCTV-9 in frustration to work for a renowned global news service, an executive producer sat her down and threatened to personally ruin her career by informing every official and person of consequence whom she would ever need as a source that she was untrustworthy and shouldn't be touched. When she wasn't moved, she got a star's sendoff. Several high-ranking executives wrote slurs for her personnel file and then made her pay a full year's salary.
But it's natural that CCTV-9 would want her under their wing instead of someone else's. They study the foreign press, and they know what happens when journalists go legit.
"Influence on the rise-China's military," Ellis Joffe, 10/09/02.
"Annan: China Must Curb AIDS Spread," Martin Fackler, 10/10/02.
"Tiananmen 'Black Hand' Chen's 13-Yr Sentence Ends," 10/10/02.
"Liberties in Doubt: Hong Kong," Mike Jendrzejczyk, 10/11/02.
"China's Changing of the Guard: Another murky leadership transition leaves the world guessing," Melinda Liu and William Dobson, 10/12/02.
"In China, flood of fake diplomas," Ted Plafker, 10/15/02.
These entries appear in a weekly survey dated Oct. 15, 2002 of China coverage in the foreign press. It circulates among the executive producers at CCTV-9 and probably originates in the Foreign Ministry. The survey is comprehensive and includes neutral-toned articles on business, sports and culture.
No one to whom I showed this survey knew exactly how it was used at CCTV-9, but it's evident that management is kept in the loop of the state's monitoring of foreign journalism. Not one of these stories was ever covered by CCTV-9. When we want a lively domestic tidbit to lead a broadcast, here's what we go with:
"Premier Zhu went to visit an organic farm in Salzburg, some 140 miles west of Vienna. The farm has an area of 38 acres, half grassland and half forest. Products made of sheep's milk are the main industry on the farm."
Footnote: 1. Yes, you read that right, "the Three Represents." I won't trouble you with an explanation of this body of thought, but I will tell you the Chinese Communist Party has pronounced it a breakthrough in Marxist ideology, which guarantees it a spot in China's political catechism - see also the One Country-Two Systems policy, the Three Antis, the Three Direct Links, the Four Cleanups, the Five Antis, the Five Red Categories, the Five Black Categories, the stinking ninth category, the Ten Major Relationships, the Sixty Points on Working Methods, etc.
Joan Maltese of San Diego worked for China Central Television. Next in the series: China controls the people by keeping them in ignorance.

With these advanced weapon the WW3 will be fought ,but in the WW4 they will fight with sticks and stones (Albert Einstein)

2 bài dưới đây là của bác tande post về tư liệu phân tích tình hình quốc tế em xin đưa vào đây để cho chủ để thêm sôm tụ và tránh loãng chủ đề.
How China's Propaganda Machine Works
Joan Maltese
Special for NewsMax.com
Friday, July 4, 2003
It's the tail end of the graveyard shift in a newsroom in Beijing. Abandoned glasses of shrubby teas stand among the computer terminals, looking like biology experiments. As the on-duty Foreign Expert at China Central Television's English-language news channel, I am tapping out the headlines for the 8 a.m. broadcast, which have been carefully chosen and sequenced by the director and producer. As for me, I'm well versed in the verbiage the censor will require. Accordingly, I write:
Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao delivers an important speech on how to continue using agriculture to build an all-around well-off society.
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Chairman Li Ruihuan says Macao has witnessed social stability and sustained economic expansion since it returned to the mainland's umbrella.
Plane crashes in Turkey and the U.S. kill 96.
That wraps up 8 a.m. I click the Submit button and go for a walk through the silent halls and cells of the CCTV-9 news offices, trying not to disturb the 50 percent of the staff who are sound asleep.
This is the headquarters of a national news service reaching millions of households in China, plus satellite subscribers in Britain and France, and Fox cable satellite subscribers in selected U.S. cities. The Fox cable deal prompted several changes, including expansion to 24-hour coverage, because it is a hopeful spearhead into the global media market. "Your first window on China," goes our motto. "China's best foot forward," is the unofficial strategy.
You'd think the place would be noisy and busy, even with the graveyard staff winding down. Phones ringing, e***ors needling for an exact quotation, the director pressing the techies to make sure the links are up for a live interview. But not at CCTV-9 - not now, nor on the evening news shift with North Korea and Iraq both on the brink of war and the Columbia space shuttle just blown up with its crew.
With the exception of a handful of mostly upbeat field reports and the government-issue propaganda, our news all comes from wire services. Pull it off the computer, shape it *****it the party line, and shunt it off to the censor, at least one of whom is onsite around the clock. No communication with remote bureaus or foreign-based reporters, no exclusives, no contacts, no fussing with time differences, no pressure. It's a good place to catch up on your sleep.
China Central Television is the state-controlled television broadcast service. It falls under the authority of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and has suffered the attention of the Chinese leader himself.
"Jiang Zemin, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, yesterday called on the country's mass media to create a 'sound atmosphere' for the Party's upcoming congress," began a front-page item in an August 2002 issue of the China Daily, the government's English-language propaganda sheet. China's media were so obedient to this call that what should have been rival organizations were giving each other plugs. "China's leading newspaper," began a CCTV-9 broadcast just before the congress, "the People's Daily, will run an e***orial Friday hailing the opening of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party in Beijing. . The e***orial also notes that the thought of [Jiang Zemin's] "Three Represents" has provided fundamental answers to vital questions.[1]
To add another level of incest, the source for the CCTV-9 item was Xinhua, China's official news agency. (Is anyone trying to scoop anyone here? Is anyone watching his rival's every comma to expose untruths? Does anyone risk losing audience to the competition for peddling pap?)
Closer to the ground, it's harder to tell who's in charge of what exactly or how everything fits together. There is no organizational chart available to employees at CCTV-9, no roster or handbook or HR department or company newsletter or all-hands meetings or any other formal means of acquainting employees with the organization they work for. Language barriers in the newsroom go largely unaddressed. Changes come down from management like thunderbolts. The budget is opaque, although it is known that salaries for Chinese staff are routinely five months in arrears.
China's Larry King
If you're not one of our satellite subscribers outside China, you can go to cctv-9.com and watch our broadcasts to get an idea of why we're here. China has opened up and reformed! Our news shows look just like yours! We have actual anchors who wear neckties! (Another channel, CCTV-12, has an interview set so similar to Larry King's that it's probably some sort of copyright infringement.)
One thing management has provided is a mission: to make our employer, the central government, look good.
That's why "Your first window on China" always affords a sunny view. When a British tourist was murdered near the Great Wall, CCTV-9 knew nothing about it. When the police shut down all the Internet cafes in Beijing, our coverage never questioned the party line that it was for safety reasons. When Falun-Gong-hunting cops raided my hostel one winter midnight, putting dozens of foreign backpackers and workaday Chinese out on the street without a moment's notice, CCTV-9 staffers were amused and sympathetic, but there was no coverage. When a group of North Koreans made a dramatic break into the Spanish embassy in Beijing that was played repeatedly on CNN, you never heard a word from us.
I went down to the Spanish embassy that afternoon in March 2002 and found Beijing's small community of real journalists. Reuters, CNN, Hong Kong's Phoenix, the BBC - everyone was there except "Your first window on China."
When an enterprising intern who also worked as a translator and interpreter wanted to do an expos頯n China's woefully unsupervised translation and interpretation business, she was told to forget it. "Why would you want foreigners to know about this problem?" demanded those in charge. The irony seems lost on them that this method of making China look good is simply exposing the country as a joke.
So they're especially stone-faced when someone within the ranks refuses to deliver the punch line. We had a business reporter exceptional by any standards who kept implicitly asking: "But what is China reforming from? Never mind all the self-praise for digging ourselves out; how did we get into this hole in the first place?"
When she finally quit CCTV-9 in frustration to work for a renowned global news service, an executive producer sat her down and threatened to personally ruin her career by informing every official and person of consequence whom she would ever need as a source that she was untrustworthy and shouldn't be touched. When she wasn't moved, she got a star's sendoff. Several high-ranking executives wrote slurs for her personnel file and then made her pay a full year's salary.
But it's natural that CCTV-9 would want her under their wing instead of someone else's. They study the foreign press, and they know what happens when journalists go legit.
"Influence on the rise-China's military," Ellis Joffe, 10/09/02.
"Annan: China Must Curb AIDS Spread," Martin Fackler, 10/10/02.
"Tiananmen 'Black Hand' Chen's 13-Yr Sentence Ends," 10/10/02.
"Liberties in Doubt: Hong Kong," Mike Jendrzejczyk, 10/11/02.
"China's Changing of the Guard: Another murky leadership transition leaves the world guessing," Melinda Liu and William Dobson, 10/12/02.
"In China, flood of fake diplomas," Ted Plafker, 10/15/02.
These entries appear in a weekly survey dated Oct. 15, 2002 of China coverage in the foreign press. It circulates among the executive producers at CCTV-9 and probably originates in the Foreign Ministry. The survey is comprehensive and includes neutral-toned articles on business, sports and culture.
No one to whom I showed this survey knew exactly how it was used at CCTV-9, but it's evident that management is kept in the loop of the state's monitoring of foreign journalism. Not one of these stories was ever covered by CCTV-9. When we want a lively domestic tidbit to lead a broadcast, here's what we go with:
"Premier Zhu went to visit an organic farm in Salzburg, some 140 miles west of Vienna. The farm has an area of 38 acres, half grassland and half forest. Products made of sheep's milk are the main industry on the farm."
Footnote: 1. Yes, you read that right, "the Three Represents." I won't trouble you with an explanation of this body of thought, but I will tell you the Chinese Communist Party has pronounced it a breakthrough in Marxist ideology, which guarantees it a spot in China's political catechism - see also the One Country-Two Systems policy, the Three Antis, the Three Direct Links, the Four Cleanups, the Five Antis, the Five Red Categories, the Five Black Categories, the stinking ninth category, the Ten Major Relationships, the Sixty Points on Working Methods, etc.
Joan Maltese of San Diego worked for China Central Television. Next in the series: China controls the people by keeping them in ignorance.

With these advanced weapon the WW3 will be fought ,but in the WW4 they will fight with sticks and stones (Albert Einstein)

China Controls the People by Keeping Them Ignorant
Joan Maltese
Special for NewsMax.com
Tuesday July 8, 2003
Part 2 in the "China's Propaganda Machine" Series. To read part 1 click here
ItÂ's no surprise that our writers donÂ't know what a story is. There are very few Chinese over the age of 30 who do, thanks to ChinaÂ's four-decade intellectual retreat after 1949.
Most of our writers are in their 20s and have no journalistic education or experience. But CCTV-9 offers no training for new hirees or interns and no rewards for initiative or self-development. Incoming Chinese staffers pass an English test that might consist of reading three sentences out loud, which starts them off as deskbound writers. From there, they can move up to directing, anchoring or field reporting. The third and final rung is the position of producer/censor.
Communist Party membership, highly coveted and hard-won, is helpful for the first two rungs, essential for the third. The executive tier is a sort of Mount Olympus populated by entrenched party members who have attained their status through sheer longevity.
The "Olympians" are our greatest obstacle to change, according to a consultant I spoke to who has been advising CCTV-9 on competing in the global media market. With virtually no experience as correspondents, no presence in the newsroom and no production duties despite their Â"ProducerÂ" titles, they provide no accumulated experience and no example of professional advancement. They have no standing in the community as professionals or achievers and no status outside CCTV-9.
They function mainly as two-way filters, tediously reviewing tape after tape of every broadcast and attending endless meetings at which they take directions from higher officials to pass down to newsroom staff.
It is said that they hate their jobs. One of them sadly remarked at the time the business writer departed that no global news organization ever came after him; heÂ'd be lost in a real newsroom.
As prominent as these people are in the hierarchy, theyÂ're devoid of basic management skills. TheyÂ've established no system to reward quality, no program to recruit or cultivate talent, no channels to air gripes or disseminate information, and no problems with the language barrier between techies and e***orial types.
As for shaping a team, forget it. There are no regular meetings, with two exceptions, which IÂ'll get to. When I was first hired, I asked the informally elected leader of the Foreign Experts why our group, at least, didnÂ't meet once a month. He explained that management would view this as Â"organizing,Â" something labor is forbidden to do in a country whose political philosophy is grounded in workersÂ' rights. So story consults, brainstorming sessions, e***orial reviews, and God knows what else goes on in a real news organization, are nonexistent.
Another gap in this picture is our audience. CCTV-9 has created no community of producers and consumers. IÂ've stumbled across feedback (critical) in the Chinese and the Western press, but it was never discussed.
Because we get a free ride from the state, we donÂ't bother with money issues such as advertising revenue and marketing surveys. And because we havenÂ't done our homework in this regard, we function under the vague assumption that most of our viewers are foreigners living in China and Chinese who want to improve their English. Those outside China are assumed to be Â"affluent and educated,Â" because after all they have satellite television.
Where Ignorance Is Bliss
With the stakes so limited and advancement so unrelated to performance, ignorance and incompetence are not issues at CCTV-9. When one asks Chinese staff to clarify an ambiguous point in a story, the immediate and final response is typically, Â"I donÂ't know.Â"
We donÂ't do follow-up. We donÂ't do phone calls. We donÂ't keep card files or directories of business or political leaders. We donÂ't subscribe to any online information services except the wires. ThereÂ's a buggy database of our news scripts that goes back a few months and a room where tapes of the current yearÂ's evening broadcasts are stored, but no searchable catalog, print or electronic, of our footage.
Lacking contacts, a reference library or an internal database, we turn to the Internet when we need answers. Because we donÂ't have the technology to bypass the stateÂ's Internet censorship, we sometimes simply have to get by without answers.
ItÂ's really too bad the Voice of AmericaÂ's Web site is blocked, because we have no guide for foreign pronunciations except the BBC and CNN broadcasts we watch in the newsroom. (I consider our access to these shows one of the jobÂ's best perqs, because it is an intellectual luxury in China that barely exists outside of five-star hotels and pricey apartments tra***ionally occupied by foreigners.)
Our business and financial coverage is especially blind. Almost no one who works on our Â"Biz ChinaÂ" has any notable expertise in business or economics.
I attempt to copye*** an item that refers to Chinese rural land ownership, which puzzles me. Â"Is rural land ownership legal in China?Â" I ask the writer. She stares at me in bewilderment. I repeat the question in increasingly simple iterations, and her answer is still a frightened stare. I donÂ't know if itÂ's because this 19-year-old business writer doesnÂ't know the answer to the question or because she doesnÂ't know what Â"land ownershipÂ" is.
In the end, the censor ends the confusion by ordering me to strike out the sentence. IÂ'm confronted with an item on auction house scandals that concludes, Â"ChristieÂ's escaped by being the first to give crucial evidence.Â" I want only to know what ChristieÂ's escaped: indictment, prosecution, fines? When I query the writer, she responds in some confusion: Â"It says Christie escaped. He fled the country.Â" I consult her wire copy and get the facts. IÂ'm too sober an individual to let the anchor say on the air, Â"SothebyÂ's was fined, but ChristieÂ's fled the country.Â"
Footnote 2: This situation changed a little during the Iraq war, when more people were tuned in and management realized weÂ'd better improve our image. One day an executive producer dashed breathlessly into the newsroom and announced that we couldnÂ't use the word Â"coalitionÂ" anymore in reference to the British, Australian and U.S. forces. He had just gotten off the phone with Â"a foreignerÂ" - credentials, profession and native language all unasked - who complained that Â"coalitionÂ" connoted to him, personally, a large number of countries, and that Â"alliesÂ" was the preferable term. ThatÂ's all it took to set a new e***orial policy for our Iraq war coverage.
Joan Maltese of San Diego worked for China Central Television. Next in the series: How China's Propaganda Machine Tries to Fool the World.

With these advanced weapon the WW3 will be fought ,but in the WW4 they will fight with sticks and stones (Albert Einstein)