Chinese Espionage: The Hidden Chamber; Part 2

A Decade of Signs
In the 1990's, certain American defense experts were alarmed by the results of repeated war gaming models that projected victory for China in a war against the United States. Wrote one analyst: "The chances are weighed, and the outcome is undisputed. The primary question now is whether Beijing will choose to act." Thus began a new era of China-watching by analysts trying desperately to read signs of China's intent.

The U.S. national security community was enfused with confidence. America's longtime primary adversary, the Soviet Union, had dissolved almost without prelude. "It was sudden victory," recalls one former counterintelligence officer assigned to monitor KGB activity in Washington, D.C. "One day we calculated the nuclear blast radii for hits on our major cities, and the next day we redrew the maps, to reflect a post-Soviet world." It was a heady time to be a cold warrior. "There was a sense that we were invincible," the former agent says. "Some thought we no longer had a serious enemy."

That sentiment was underscored by comments from an influential China expert, Charles W. Freeman Jr. A longtime international emissary, Freeman - whose resume boasts stints as an assistant defense secretary and as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia - served as the principal American interpreter during President Richard Nixon's groundbreaking visit to China. The authoritative Freeman once described post-Soviet America as suffering from "enemy deprivation syndrome - the sick feeling of disorientation one feels when one has lost a powerful enemy and isn't quite sure how to justify continued high levels of defense spending." Not surprisingly, Freeman dismissed American fears of a belligerent Beijing as stemming from the "syndrome." Freeman insisted there was no serious "China threat."

A small cadre of China watchers believed otherwise.

"Some of us on the Hill saw many, many, signs of an ascendant, aggressive China," says one former Senate staffer. "Quite a few others did not agree with us, and tried to cast us as troublemakers. But Beijing was acting scary as Hell."

In 1998, Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng accused Washington of causing problems between the two nations. The communist ruler was grievously insulted when President Bill Clinton granted a U.S. visa to the president of Taiwan, but then refused to allow an official visit from Jiang Zemin, the PRC head of state. In ceremonies marking the anniversary of the forming of the People's Republic of China, Li Peng announced that his country had gone through "earthshaking changes," and no longer would be bullied or downtrodden. Most ominously, Li Peng repeated a favorite PRC war mantra, that Beijing intended to recapture Taiwan.

The rhetoric was backed by tangible change. In a scant half decade beginning 1990, the PRC funded a 140% increase in military spending. It was an unprecedented buildup. A prominent China expert and defense analyst, Nicholas Eftimiades, said at the time that the Reagan-era U.S. defense buildup was "nothing compared to this."

Even more troubling was how China planned to apply its defense budget. In the 1970's, senior party member Deng Xiaoping harshly critiqued the Chinese army for being "bloated, lax, conceited, extravagant and inert." At the time, China's soldiers served without military rank in a poorly equipped force. In 1998, though, commanders reinstated military rank and corresponding discipline. National leaders switched the military doctrine from primarily defensive to aggressive or expeditionary. The army added divisions of rapid-reaction troops, and started to replace its rubber-band propelled arsenal with major modern weapons systems.

Among the new weapons were Russian built aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and diesel fueled submarines, along with intercontinental missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe or California.

By the late 1990's, the U.S. intelligence community - which has been known to compartmentalize - began to share within select circles the findings from various studies. According to a number of sources, analsyts within the Naval War College, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency compared notes and concurred that China soon would be poised to cease muscle-flexing and commence saber-rattling.

By 2004, even Charles W. Freeman seemed to have come around. Although he still dismissed the worriers ("Only the lunatic fringe and a few of its fellow travelers inside the Beltway now seek to appoint China as enemy-in-chief of the United States"), Freeman acknowledged a stark possibility. In a speech quoted in the English language Peoples Daily Online, Freeman said: "There is a real possibility that, before the end of the decade, the United States may find ourselves at war with China over Taiwan."

What none of the participants in this converstation seemed to realize was that even as their discussions played out both in private and in public, an unseen column already was in place within our homeland, gathering vital secret material on behalf of Beijing.

Later: Watching From Within