WASHINGTON — China has successfully mounted a systematic espionage campaign in the United States since the 1970s that has helped it harvest U.S. nuclear weapon secrets, advanced missile and warplane guidance systems, futuristic electromagnetic weapons and other sensitive military technology, a long-awaited House investigative committee report concludes.
The report, which will be formally released today, says that China has stolen the design secrets of seven U.S. nuclear warheads, including every weapon in the current U.S. nuclear arsenal, through spying at four U.S. government weapons research laboratories and production facilities.
Beijing is expected to use elements of the U.S. designs to upgrade and expand its small and antiquated nuclear strike force, the report warns, in part by using high-performance computers that China has been allowed to purchase from U.S. companies since 1996.
The report repeatedly warns that China's success at using legal and illegal means to obtain U.S. military and other technology poses a direct threat to the security of America, U.S. troops overseas and key allies in Asia. It adds that the possibility of a U.S. confrontation with China cannot be dismissed.
The unanimous report by the nine-member Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, which was chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), offers far more sweeping and dramatic conclusions about the success of Chinese espionage than those in an April 21 assessment by the U.S. intelligence community. That evaluation said that Chinese espionage "probably accelerated" Beijing's future weapons development. It added that it is "more likely" that China used U.S. designs to "inform their own program rather than to replicate U.S. weapons designs."
Using much more unequivocal language, the Cox committee concludes that thefts of U.S. weapon designs enabled Beijing to design, develop and successfully test modern strategic nuclear weapons sooner than otherwise would have been possible. The stolen U.S. secrets gave Beijing design information on thermonuclear weapons on a par with the United States, the report adds.
Although details of the committee's six-month inquiry have been leaking since the beginning of the year, and some were made public long before the investigation began, a 29-page overview obtained by The Times offers the first comprehensive look at a report likely to have vast political repercussions both in Washington and Beijing.
