www.Gunnery.Net

Gunnery Network
 Chinese Colonels at Harvard
Written by Don Feder - September 6, 2000

Article reprinted courtesy of www.NewsMax.com

NEWSMAX.COM -  Let's recap: The People's Republic of China is 
engaged in a vast program of military expansion, has looted our 
nuclear secrets, sees America as its principal adversary, threatens 
war with Taiwan if the island doesn't acquiesce to a hostile takeover 
and promises to launch a nuclear strike against us if we intervene.

So, what are 24 senior colonels of the People's Liberation Army
doing at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School as you read these
words?

Why they're being lectured by current and former national security
officials on how the United States would respond militarily to a
crisis over Taiwan - presumably on the theory that the more the
enemy knows about your strategic planning the better for you.

Harvard's current guests are the third group of Chinese colonels run
through a program established in 1997 by Joseph Nye, a former
Clinton defense official and China soft-liner, now dean of the
Kennedy School. It's funded by a $1 million-grant from a Hong
Kong businesswoman with extensive mainland ties.

Marshall Goldman, Harvard's Russia expert, observes, "Almost all
the Chinese are intelligence people" - unlike the people running the
program.

The Kennedy School lectures are an attempt to circumvent an
amendment to last year's defense appropriations bill that limits
military exchanges with the PLA. Congress had grown increasingly
wary of these misadventures - like letting Chinese officers witness
the training of Navy fighter pilots at Top Gun - which were starting
to resemble a Wal-Mart for intelligence gatherers.

But the administration is so eager to show its friendship for Beijing
that it must devise other ways to share sensitive data.

The president just can't do enough for his strategic partners. This
spring, he pledged to do "whatever it takes" to get Permanent
Normal Trade Relations for China, to assure a continuation of the
trade that finances its military build-up. He's repeatedly threatened
to veto the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act (designed to bolster
the island's defenses), which passed the House in February.

When Taiwan's new president, Chen Shui-bian, was in California in
August, in transit to Central America, a bipartisan congressional
delegation wanted to meet with the man who led the first
democratic change of government in 5,000 years of Chinese
history.

Fearing it would antagonize the PRC, the State Department
pressured Chen into declining the meeting. But, it rolled out the red
carpet for Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, the PLA's deputy chief of
staff, when he visited Washington in January.

During the 1996 Taiwan crisis, when China was test-firing missiles
in the island's direction, Xiong warned that Beijing had ICBMs
which could take out Los Angeles. That's how to get the royal
treatment from this administration - threaten to turn America's
second largest city into radioactive rubble.

Four Gore years of this policy and the People's Liberation Army
could be marching down the main street of Carthage, Tenn.

For the vice president, China is an "extremely important partner."
He's against "isolating and demonizing" China (dealing with it
realistically) and wants to "build a bridge" - to Tiananmen Square?

In a 1997 trip to the mainland, he repeated the Clinton mantra on
humanizing totalitarian thugs, "We seek real progress on human
rights, not confrontation." This high-sounding rhetoric really means
that no matter what bloody atrocities Beijing commits, America will
never criticize it directly but hope that our kindness will somehow
infuse the regime with a spirit of benevolence.

China is evolving in a somewhat different direction. On March 6,
Beijing announced that the nation's military budget will increase by
12.7 percent this year, the eighth straight year of double-digit
growth.

The same day, the Liberation Army Daily warned that American
intervention in a conflict with Taiwan would result in "serious
damage to U.S. interests" and casually noted its "capacity of
launching a long-distance strike."

Along with the Kennedy School sessions on our strategic planning,
perhaps the administration would like to help Beijing with
procurement and recruitment. We've already sold it supercomputers
to help improve the accuracy of its ballistic missiles.

Just when you thought Clinton's China policy couldn't get more
surreal, you find we've fallen down another rabbit hole, arriving at a
whole new level of Wonderland.

COPYRIGHT 2000 BOSTON HERALD DISTRIBUTED BY
CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

Don Feder became the first executive director of Citizens For
Limited Taxation in 1976, became executive director of Second
Amendment Foundation in 1980, and writes for the Boston
Herald.