China - Serial proliferator of nuclear weapons

Sabir

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Why China Helped Countries Like Pakistan, North Korea Build Nuclear Bombs

Former U.S. Air Force
Secretary Thomas Reed knows nuclear bombs better than most people. For starters, he designed two of them when he worked at the Livermore National Laboratory as a weapons designer.
His new book The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation, co-written with Danny Stillman, the former director of the technical intelligence division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, rewrites much of the public understanding about how countries with nuclear weapons came to acquire them. All countries that built bombs, including the United States, spied on or were given access to the work of other nuclear powers. In particular, the book is a scathing indictment of the Chinese government, alleging that it intentionally proliferated nuclear technology to risky regimes, particularly Pakistan.

Reed recently spoke with U.S. News's Alex Kingsbury. Excerpts:

How has the Chinese government reacted to the allegations in your book?

At first, they objected to some of this reporting, which was first published in Physics Today, but they later withdrew all objections. The Chinese experts in the weapons labs were probably surprised that we found out all this information and were able to put it all together. In public they say one thing, but behind closed doors and after hours, they are more open. All scientists want the credit for having solved certain problems by themselves without outside help. In fact, in 1949 Klaus Fuchs spied for the Soviets at Los Alamos and when he was released from prison in 1959, fled to East Germany where he met China's chief atomic bomb scientist to whom he explained the inner workings of the Fat Man bomb [which the United States dropped on Nagasaki in 1945].

What was the Chinese strategy behind encouraging proliferation once they had mastered the atomic bomb?

The way you describe the Chinese intentionally spreading nuclear technology to countries like Pakistan and North Korea seems both shockingly lax and shortsighted.
Shockingly lax? Yes. Shortsighted I'm not so sure.
Think of it as three constituencies: China in about 1982, under Deng Xiaoping, decided to proliferate nuclear technology to communists and Muslims in the third world. They did so deliberately with the theory that if nukes ended up going off in the western world from a Muslim terrorist, well that wasn't all bad. If New York was reduced to rubble without Chinese fingerprints on the attack, that left Beijing as the last man standing. That's what the old timers thought.
The current Chinese government is far more cautious, though it continued to push technology to North Korea. When the North Koreans decided to test, they clearly did so without a Chinese permit and it really frosted the Chinese because it threatened to prompt Japan and South Korea to start their own programs. They didn't worry about terrorism at all.
The younger generation is adamant about keeping a lid on nuclear technology. They don't want to see Los Angeles blown up because they just sold us 10,000 pairs of sneakers. Those last two forces are contending with each other and it remains to be seen what will happen.

Why , as you say in the book, did the Chinese give the technology to Pakistan?

Pakistan can be explained by a balance of power: India was China's enemy and Pakistan was India's enemy. The Chinese did a massive training of Pakistani scientists, (just like the Russians had done for them) brought them to China for lectures, even gave them the design of the CHIC-4 device, which was a weapon that was easy to build a model for export. There is evidence that A.Q. Khan used Chinese designs in his nuclear designs. Notes from those lectures later turned up in Libya, for instance. And the Chinese did similar things for the Saudis, North Koreans, and the Algerians.

Did the Chinese further assist in the Pakistan program?

Under Pakistani president Benazir Bhutto, the country built its first functioning nuclear weapon. We believe that during Bhutto's term in office, the People's Republic of China tested Pakistan's first bomb for her in 1990.There are numerous reasons why we believe this to be true, including the design of the weapon and information gathered from discussions with Chinese nuclear experts. That's why the Pakistanis were so quick to respond to the Indian nuclear tests in 1998. It only took them two weeks and three days. When the Soviet Union took the United States by surprise with a test in 1961, it took the U.S. seventeen days to prepare and test, a device that had been on hand for years. The Pakistani response makes it clear that the gadget tested in May 1998 was a carefully engineered device in which they had great confidence.

Is sharing nuclear tests common?

The United States conducted nuclear tests in Nevada openly and with full disclosure in the 1990s on behalf of our U.K. allies. We speculate on Israeli access to the U.S. test results. For their part, the Chinese admitted to having conducted hydronuclear and radiation effects tests for France, but most tellingly they also implied—they certainly did not deny—the test of a Pakistani device. The South Africans also apparently worked with the Israelis on a nuclear test in the South Pacific in 1979.

Are Chinese proliferation programs ongoing?

Since 1991, China has been assisting the raw-materials side of the Iranian nuclear program with shipments of uranium, instructions on the design of a conversion facility in Eshfahan, and an enrichment facility at Karaj. China has been using North Korea as the re-transfer point for the sale of nuclear and missile technology to Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen.
You also write that Israel was given assistance in developing their bomb while the United States looked the other way.
In the wake of the Suez crisis in 1956, the French and the Israelis initiated a joint nuclear weapons program that resulted in a test in the Algerian desert. At that test in 1960, two countries went nuclear with one shot.

Is the world safer or more dangerous with all these powers?

The world is safer for having all the permanent UN Security Council members possess nuclear weapons. I think having North Korea, Pakistan, and India is probably not a good idea. Nuclear proliferation, above all, is not inevitable as many thought at the dawn of the nuclear age.

Why China Helped Countries Like Pakistan, North Korea Build Nuclear Bombs - US News and World Report
 

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His new book The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation, co-written with Danny Stillman, the former director of the technical intelligence division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, rewrites much of the public understanding about how countries with nuclear weapons came to acquire them. All countries that built bombs, including the United States, spied on or were given access to the work of other nuclear powers. In particular, the book is a scathing indictment of the Chinese government, alleging that it intentionally proliferated nuclear technology to risky regimes, particularly Pakistan.
I do really want to thank you. Really, Sabir.

Before this, I took Reed and Stillman at their word but reading through the other links, they're putting rumour as fact to make a buck.

The Soviets got their thermonukes from an American spy.
The French gave the Israelis their nukes.
The Israelis got access to American nuclear weapons data.
The Chinese tested French nuclear devices for them.
The Israelis tested a South African device.

At this point, I don't even know if the Chinese had in fact tested a CHiC-4 for Pakistan.

Thank you. Seriously, thank you. One more authority to throw in the trash can. Actually two.
 

hit&run

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I do really want to thank you. Really, Sabir.

Before this, I took Reed and Stillman at their word but reading through the other links, they're putting rumour as fact to make a buck.

The Soviets got their thermonukes from an American spy.
The French gave the Israelis their nukes.
The Israelis got access to American nuclear weapons data.
The Chinese tested French nuclear devices for them.
The Israelis tested a South African device.

At this point, I don't even know if the Chinese had in fact tested a CHiC-4 for Pakistan.

Thank you. Seriously, thank you. One more authority to throw in the trash can. Actually two.
We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.
Dean Rusk

Sir,
Cold war is over !
China's Non-Proliferation Words vs. China's Nuclear Proliferation Deeds
 

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China says never engaged in nuclear proliferation

China says never engaged in nuclear proliferation


fullstory

Beijing, Sept 22 (PTI) China, one of the five recognised nuclear powers, today said it has never engaged in proliferation, days after Pakistan's disgraced scientist A Q Khan claimed his country had helped it in enrichment technology in return for atomic bomb blue-prints.

China is firmly opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in whatever forms, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said here when asked to comment on Khan's latest revelation that Pakistan supplied nuclear know-how to its "all weather" ally.

"As a member of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, China has always strictly abided by its international obligation on the non-proliferation issue," she was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.

74-year-old Khan, considered father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, had revealed that his country helped China in enrichment technology in return for bomb blue-prints.
 
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China and Nuclear Proliferation

http://www.npec-web.org/Testimonies/20080520-Sokolski-USCC-PreparedTestimony.pdf


China and Nuclear Proliferation: Rethinking the Link

Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission

It would be nice if nuclear proliferators went out of their way to violate U.S. and international proliferation restrictions Unfortunately, they are smarter than that.. China,for example, no longer offers nuclear-capable M-9 missiles to countries like Syria. That would trigger U.S. missile nonproliferation sanctions. On the other hand, Chinese front companies recently funneled North Korean-purchased dual use nuclear goods to the Syrian reactor project. That is far harder to track and almost certain to go unsanctioned. Should we reduce our efforts to monitor such transactions? Hardly. But if we want to assure that we are doing all we can to reduce further Chinese-induced proliferation, we will need to track additional trends.

Besides increasingly covert and indirect strategic technology transfers to Pakistan or Iran, we now need also to worry about how Beijing might divide us from our closest Asian security allies—Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea -- governments that have so far skipped going nuclear or ballistic. In addition, what choices China makes to expand its civilian domestic and export nuclear programs will have a major impact on how much more nuclear weapons-capable Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states become. Finally, whether and how China decides to increase its own nuclear weapons deployments will directly influence the weapons ambitions, not only of Beijing’s East Asian neighbors, but of India, Pakistan, Russia, France, the U.K., and the U.S.

More and more, it will be these broader developments, rather than illicit Chinese transfers alone, that we will need to watch and shape. To address them, our government should make several adjustments to current. Policy in order to encourage China to (1) cap its further production of nuclear weapons-usable fuels; (2) pursue nuclear export projects only if they are unambiguously profitable, and (3) discourage any further state-backed transfers of nuclear weapons or nuclear-capable missiles to any other states’ soil in peacetime. The analysis below makes clear why.East Asia and the Pacific In East Asia and the Pacific, China’s nuclear policy decisions could easily push the entire region into a round of nuclear competitions. Is China manipulating the Six-Party negotiations to strain U.S.-Japanese and U.S.-South Korean relations? Is China making “progress” in disabling North Korean nuclear capabilities contingent upon Washington having to downplay unresolved North Korean kidnappings of Japanese citizens, Pyongyang’s drug dealing to Japan’s youth, and other profoundly provocative, illicit North Korean activities in Japan? Are we siding with China and against Japan’s private counsel too much in glossing over the challenges of verifying North Korea’s nuclear holdings and activities? Are there other actions that China might take or is taking that could prompt Japan to question Washington’s commitment to guaranteeing Japan’s security? What is Japan’s assessment of the threats posed by North Korea and China nuclear weapons systems? Do Tokyo’s assessments here explain in any way Japan’s continued pursuit of its own uneconomical space-launch and nuclear fuel-making programs? How upsetting to Tokyo are Chinese naval operation in the Sea of Japan?

What do the Japanese privately make of Beijing’s continued bullying and military hectoring of Taiwan—a territory that sits athwart Japan’s most vital sea lane of communication with South East Asia and the Persian Gulf?

South Korea is another close U.S. security ally. Like Taiwan, South Korea has previously questioned the reliability of U.S. security assurances and has been caught attempting to acquire nuclear weapons more than once. South Korea is developing its own space launch vehicle, which could be converted to deliver nucelar weapons and Taiwan has developed long-range surface to surface cruise missile that can easily reach targets in China. South Korea has also again announced its desire to recycle spent nuclear fuel for “civilian purposes” and has secured U.S. Department of Energy assistance to launch a pyroreprocessing program. Seoul has done so even though producing plutonium-based commercial reactor fuels could bring South Korea to the brink of acquiring bombs and is far more expensive than using fresh uranium fuel in existing light water power reactors. China surely is not eager to see either South Korea or Taiwan go nuclear or ballistic. On the other hand, China would hardly object if Seoul freed itself of U.S. influence and troops. Might Beijing prefer a South Korea confederated with Pyongyang—even though this might result in a nuclear-armed Korean confederation—over a Korea unified with U.S. troops still present? In this case, wouldn’t Chinese efforts to strengthen trade and diplomatic relations with Seoul make sense even if or especially if they came at the expense of Seoul being able to maintain good relations with Japan or the U.S.? As for Taiwan, are there clear limits of how far China might go to intimidate and isolate Taiwan from the U.S. and Japan?

In the next 10 to 15 years, the answers to these questions could induce Japan, South Korea or Taiwan to go nuclear or ballistic. If any of these states further hedges their bets by edging toward nuclear weapons, this, in turn, would likely pressure Australia (a country that had its own bomb program as late as 1969), Indonesia (a nation that has repeatedly vowed to keep up with its neighbors on the nuclear front), and Vietnam (a “civilian” nuclear power aspirant) to develop nuclear weapons options of their own.Each might not get the bomb overtly, but, like Iran, bring themselves to the brink through “peaceful” nuclear activities.

Of course, how far China expands and modernize its own nuclear weapons arsenal will also weigh heavily on how much nuclear hedging its neighbors choose to pursue. Will China continue to modernize its nuclear weapons systems incrementally and maintain the current number of systems it now deploys? Or will it, instead, ramp up its efforts on either or both fronts so as to prompt its non-nuclear neighbors and Russia, the U.S., India, Pakistan, France and the U.K to react with nuclear hedge actions of their own? These questions are hardly far fetched: Just last week, President Hu tried to reassure Japan that China did not wish to start an arms race in the region. Implicit to his announcement was the threat that China might yet feel compelled to do so.

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South Asia and the Middle East

No country has lent as much nuclear-capable missile and nuclear weapons-related assistance collectively to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran as China. Just last year, China also extended offers of civilian nuclear cooperation with Egypt and India. Recently,there were reports that Chinese front companies were helping to forward nuclear goods to Syria. Dual-use Chinese nuclear technical assistance and space launch vehicle assistance (vice transfers of entire missile systems, nuclear weapons fuel, or complete bomb designs) are likely to continue to several of these states in ways that will be challenging for the U.S. to detect or sanction.

Here, Pakistan leads the list. Last year, the military-dominated government under Musharraf announced it would respond to India’s expansion of its nuclear program with a 20-fold expansion of Pakistan’s own fledging nuclear power program. The key to this expansion will be Pakistan’s imports of Chinese-designed pressurized heavy water reactors—systems that could be easily adapted to produce nuclear weapons-usable plutonium. As for the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons production efforts, China has already helped with Pakistan’s production of plutonium and weapons-grade uranium as well as lending Islamabad long-range missile assistance.


Two years ago, China also offered to help India expand its “peaceful” nuclear energy program—a program that Pakistani military officials fear might only bolster India’s military nuclear weapons production capabilities. How well Beijing balances its nuclear offers to Pakistan and India will play a major role in determining when and if a major nuclear competition is again set off between New Delhi and Islamabad. On the one hand,China’s bilateral trade with India is quite large (on par with U.S.-Indian trade) and Beijing would like to expand its trade relations with New Delhi. This would suggest that it is hardly in China’s interest to antagonize India or to encourage New Delhi to compete with China militarily. On the other hand, China has long had a special security relationship with Islamabad and Riyadh.

This special relationship has resulted in some of the region’s most significant strategic weapons transfers. Since the early 1980s, Beijing has given Pakistan nuclear-capable missiles, nuclear weapons materials and fuel-making technologies, and even a tested nuclear bomb design. In 1988, China sold Saudi Arabia 36 medium-range CCS-2 rockets that Beijing had previously deployed as nuclear weapons delivery systems along with technicians to maintain these rockets. It has been rumored China may also have offered to forward Riyadh nuclear warheads to arm these rockets if Saudi Arabia was ever sufficiently threatened. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, helped bankroll Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. In 2003, it was reported that Saudi Arabia was studying its options to acquire nuclear weapons and that one of these options was to seek to acquire or lease them from another country. China could encourage Pakistan to do this or Beijing might transfer warheads itself. As long as Pakistan or China maintained “control” over these devices, neither they nor Saudi Arabia would be in technical violation of the NPT

Pakistani demand for continued Chinese nuclear assistance also remains high, as does its military’s motives to cooperate strategically with Saudi Arabia. Recently, Pakistan’s military has privately voiced concerns about U.S. abandonment (or betrayal), New Delhi’s possible ramp-up of nuclear weapons production, and Indian “encirclement” (i.e., Indian construction of naval facilities at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz in Iran, Indian construction of roads from this port in Iran to Afghanistan, Indian support of Baluchistani irredentist movements, India’s increasing assistance to Afghanistan, etc.). All of these concerns could encourage Pakistan’s military to seek strategic depth by establishing stronger security relations with Saudi Arabia. What China does to support or discourage Pakistan in this regard could easily determine if Saudi Arabia becomes a host of foreign nuclear arms.

Meanwhile, China must also balance its relations between Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Coordinating Council neighbors on the one hand, and Iran on the other. Riyadh has heavily invested financially in commercial enterprises in China, but is having difficulty getting proper return on its investment. Saudi Arabia, as a result, has little interest in doing anything to aggravate its relations with Beijing. China, on the other hand, has invested heavily in Iranian enterprises that are not yet producing clear profits for Beijing. It is hardly surprising, then, that China wishes to maintain good relations with all of the oil-producing Gulf States. However, the current set of financial relations between China, Saudi Arabia and Iran will encourage China to do what it can to increase its influence and leverage over Iran and to protect Iran against other states that might sanction or limit Tehran’s ability to make money.

This inclination is likely to dampen Beijing’s willingness to discipline Iranian nuclear misbehavior. It clearly is not in China’s interest to be seen breaking nonproliferation rules toward any state, much less Iran—a state that is currently in violation of its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). But if there are relatively inexpensive ways to make Iran dependent upon Chinese strategic technology assistance, ways that that do not clearly break the relevant international rules—e.g., the strictures of the NPT, Nuclear Supplier Group guidelines, IAEA safeguards requirements, or Missile Technology Control Regime principles—China will have an interest in pursuing them.

Having suffered trade sanctions following the events of Tiananmen Square, China is also naturally disinclined to join others in imposing trade sanctions against any country. This is doubly so in Iran’s case for the financial reasons noted above. At the same time, China is not eager to isolate itself: It will support modest sanctions against Iran, but it will be unlikely, however, to get ahead of Moscow and it will generally do what it can first to soften or delay sanctions against Tehran. What’s worrisome here is that this has only encourage Tehran to believe that it can continue to defy United Nations resolutions calling on Iran to suspend nuclear fuel-making—activities which can bring Iran within days or weeks of acquiring bombs—without paying a high price economically or diplomatically.

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Finally, China is beginning to compete for civilian nuclear influence in the Middle East with the United States, Russia, and France. China’s last major, joint nuclear venture in the region was a secret, 15 MWe pressurized heavy water reactor project it built for Algeria in the l980s. It was discovered accidentally by U.S. spy satellites in early 1991.The Algerian reactor was encircled with air defenses and there was reason to worry that itwas part of a covert Algerian bomb project. The reactor has since been placed under IAEA nuclear inspections.

More recently, China, like the U.S. and France, has offered to assist Egypt in the development of large power and desalinization plants. Egypt, which subsidizes the use of its own domestic natural gas, claims it needs nuclear power as a hedge for running low on this fossil fuel. China could export its own older pressurized heavy water reactors or it might work to develop a more modern machine that might incorporate French or U.S.-origin technologies. In either case, these reactors would produce scores of bombs-worth of weapons-usable plutonium.

In the 1980s, Egypt conducted covert missile and chemical weapons programs in clear violation of its pledges to the U.S. and others to steer clear of such activities. Cairo pursued these program to “counterbalance” Israeli military capabilities and in hope of establishing Egypt as a Pan-Arab military leader. If Iran continues its march towards development of nuclear weapons option, many proliferation analysts fear Egypt will find developing its own nuclear weapons option hard to resist even if it has publicly pledged to do otherwise.

The Future of China’s Nuclear Program
As already noted, it is unclear if China is intent on ramping up its nuclear weapons program or not. It is investing more to modernize its nuclear weapons systems and is modernizing every branch of its strategic nuclear forces. So far, however, China has seems not to have dramatically increased the numbers of weapons it deploys. What’s worrisome is that China is positioning itself technologically and logistically so it can ramp up its strategic weapons deployments rapidly if it chose to do so. China now has between 200 and 400 nuclear weapons, and is also stockpiling as much as 20 metric tons of highly enriched urarnium and 4 metric tons of separated plutonium in its military stockpile. This is enough material conservatively to make one to two thousand additional advanced nuclear weapons.

By way of comparison, Japan has 6 metric tons of separated plutonium stored in-country (i.e., enough to make at least 1,200 crude fission bombs) and another 38 metric tons of separated plutonium stored outside of Japan (i.e., enough to make at least an additional 7,600 crude fission bombs). Japan also has just begun operating a large commercial scale plutonium reprocessing plant capable of producing as much as 5 metric tons of plutonium annually (i.e., enough for an additional 1,000 nuclear weapons per year).1

1. In 2002, Japan's Labor Party chief, Ichiro Ozawa suggested in 2002 that Japan could use its commercial plutonium to make thousands of nuclear weapons if China became too unruly

It is worth noting that Japan has paid a high premium to reprocess this material. Their latest commercial reprocessing plant cost over $20 billion dollars. Some of the plutonium produced is used as mixed oxide (MOX) fuel to fuel Japanese power reactors, but it too comes at a premium (MOX fuel costs 2 to 3 times as much as using lightly enriched uranium). It is estimated that Japan’s commercial plutonium effort adds between 2 and 3 cents per kilowatt hour to the cost of its nuclear electricity. If it wanted to assure nuclear energy security, Japan could buy a 50-year supply of lightly enriched uranium and stockpile it for a fraction of what it is costing it to pursue its plutonium reactor fuel program. The program, in short, makes little economic sense.

Unfortunately, China is planning to emulate Japan. It’s intent not only on bringing roughly as many reactors on line by 2020 as Japan currently has operating, but on reprocessing spent fuel, fabricating and using MOX in its light water reactors, and operating breeder reactors using plutonium fuels. China started operation of its first pilot reprocessing plant in 2006 and expects it to become fully operation later this year. It also hopes to bring its first experimental breeder on line this year. Beijing is expected to decide sometime this year whether or not to invest over $22 billion to have Areva of France build it a large commercial-sized reprocessing plant and MOX fabrication facility.This reprocessing plant would be roughly similar in size and capacity to what Japan currently has operating.

Implications for U.S. Policy
As noted at the outset, each of these broader set of questions regarding China’s nuclear
policies recommends adjustments to current U.S. policy.

First, we need to encourage China to cap its further production of nuclear weaponsusable fuels. Our current policies are nearly doing the reverse. On the one hand, our Department of Energy is actively promoting uneconomical commercial spent fuel recycling projects and the use of near-nuclear weapons-usable plutonium-based reactor fuels domestically, as well as in Japan, South Korea and Russia. Our U.S. State Department, meanwhile, is doing little to pressure China to announce that it will no longer produce fissile materials for military purposes even though the other permanent members of the United Nations Secuirty Council already have. The indirect, compound effect of these two U.S. policies is to foster the continued growth of a nuclear powder keg of plutonium in the Far East, one that is sure to have negative knock-on effects on India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons aspirations. It would be preferable for China to announce that it will suspend any further production of fissionable materials for military purposes and it will shelve its immediate commercial plans to produce plutonium-based fuels. This, in turn, could be used to pressure Pakistan and India to swear off making fissile material for military purposes as well. To leverage such results, Washington might suggest that Japan simultaneously suspend its own uneconomical production of plutonium-based reactor fuels and defer all U.S. government-funded efforts to so domestically, jointly with Russia, and bilaterally with South Korea

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Second, we should encourage China only to push nuclear projects that are unambiguously profitable. The U.S. itself continues to pile on more and more nuclearspecific government-backed guarantees and subsidies for domestic and foreign reactorrelated projects that private banks would otherwise not finance or support. Most other nations, including China, have gone even further in backing domestic and export nuclear projects, including very dangerous ones in Pakistan and potentially worrisome ones in theMiddle East. This is an increasingly risky business, one that is at odds with everyone’s long-term security and economic interests. Spending extra to accelerate this trade is a mistake. At a minimum, we should be much more candid in identifying the full costs of energy subsidies generally and of nuclear-specific subsidies in particular. As the U.S. works with other states to develop the follow-on to the Kyoto Protocol, it would helpful to encourage all states to include these and all other costs in comparing different energy options and to allow open international bidding among alternatives to meet any given set of energy and environmental requirements. These principles are articulated in the Charter Energy Treaty and the Global Charter for Sustainable Energy Development. The U.S. claims that it supports the principles in both of these agreements. Still, they are not currently enforced. Washington should work with other states to change this. Certainly, the U.S. should discourage China and nuclear power system providers generally from building or exporting any nuclear projects that are more expensive and less profitable than their nonnuclear alternatives, especially since such projects are frequently among the most dangerous, and yet are now being considered in energy-rich states in the Middle East.

Finally, henceforth the U.S. should discourage state transfers of nuclear weapons to other states’ soil in peacetime. It would be helpful not only for China and Pakistan to do so (e.g., in Saudi Arabia), but to get Washington, Moscow, London and Paris to make similar political “no deployment” announcements. Here, the U.S. might announce its intent to make no net additional deployments to NATO and announce its willingness to reduce existing forward deployments if Russia agrees to do likewise. With the possible exception of forward-deployed weapons in Turkey, most U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe no longer serve much operational purpose. They were deployed when the U.S. lacked accurate ballistic missiles, bombers and cruise missiles. So long as we hold on to enough of these long-range systems, it will make more sense militarily to rely less on our forward-deployed weapons.

All of these policy adjustments should be taken in addition to being vigilant of Chinese violations of U.S. and international nuclear export control laws. Certainly, if we fail to make them, China will keep pressing its own nuclear policies domestically, in East Asia and in the Middle East, in a manner that will come in direct collision with our security interests and that of our allies. Fortunately, none of these adjustments entails much risk. All of them can be begun and even be completed without negotiating new treaties. Each also would save millions to billions of dollars in government spending. Finally, in every case, they would make us safer.
 

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Well folks, here it is at last - uncontrovertable proof from the Horse's mouth itself - no less than Dr. AQ Khan himself.

Not only did they provide the nuke design, they also provided 50KG of Uranuim.

Oh My GUD......WTF is this country doing in the UN Security Council ???
China has disgraced the UN Security Council.

The Pakistanis also supplied European centrifuge technology to China. This is starting to sound like some macabre incestuous sick relationship.

I am sure our Chinese friends on DFI are going to deny the whole thing.


Here is the Link in the Washington Post:
washingtonpost.com

BTW: The Washington Post is one of the top 2 newspapers in the US....they dont run stuff without checking it thoroughly.
 

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How China gifted 50kg uranium for two bombs to Pakistan

How China gifted 50kg uranium for two bombs to Pakistan
Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN 13 November 2009, 01:13pm IST
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WASHINGTON: China’s dirty little secret of nuclear proliferation to Pakistan, including virtually giving Islamabad two nuclear weapons on a platter while the US remained oblivious and smug, has exploded in Washington. Embarrassingly for President Barack Obama, the disclosures come on the eve of his much-anticipated visit to Beijing.

The broad story is known to every Tom, Dinesh, and Hamid in strategic circles — that sometime in the early 1980s, China provided Pakistan with nuclear know-how and materials to enable it to make the bomb, in part to weigh down India and in part out of gratitude to Islamabad for facilitating its opening to US. But astonishing details of the transaction, which China has blithely denied because it is in violation of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations, have been exposed courtesy A.Q.Khan, Pakistan’s Dr Strangelove, to spite the military which incarcerated him.

In a letter that Khan sent to British journalist Simon Henderson, parts of which have already been made public with the latest dribble coming out ahead of Obama’s visit to China next week, the Pakistani metallurgist reveals the following sequence of an episode the broad contours of which are well known despite Chinese-Pakistani subterfuge for nearly 30 years: In 1976, some four years after India tested its first nuclear device, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto approached China’s supreme leader Chairman Mao in his quest for the nuclear bomb. By this time, Bhutto had already invited expat Pakistani scientists, including A.Q.Khan, to return home to help Islamabad make the bomb to ensure that the country was never again humiliated by India the way it happened in 1971.

Mao died soon after, but according to Khan, the matter was advanced in talks he and two other Pakistani officials, including then foreign secretary Agha Shahi, had with Chinese officials at Mao’s funeral. It was not a one-sided transaction: the Pakistanis told the Chinese how European-designed centrifuges (whose designs Khan had stolen) could swiftly aid China's lagging uranium-enrichment program.

"Chinese experts started coming regularly to learn the whole technology" from Pakistan and Pakistani experts were dispatched to Hanzhong in central China, where they helped "put up a centrifuge plant," Khan said in an account he gave to his wife after Musharraf purged him under US pressure. That letter eventually found its way to the Henderson who shared it with the Washington Post, which advanced the story on Thursday. "We sent 135 C-130 plane loads of machines, inverters, valves, flow meters, pressure gauges," Khan wrote. "Our teams stayed there for weeks to help and their teams stayed here for weeks at a time."

Initially, it appears China sent Pakistan 15 tons of uranium hexafluoride (UF6), a feedstock for Pakistan's centrifuges that Khan's colleagues were having difficulty producing on their own. Evidently, Khan had made the centrifuges from the designs he stole but did not have enough raw material to run it. Khan said the gas enabled the laboratory to begin producing bomb-grade uranium in 1982. Chinese scientists also helped the Pakistanis solve other nuclear weapons challenges.

By then, Gen.Zia-ul Haq had taken over the reigns in Islamabad and had hanged Bhutto. Rumors of a pre-emptive strike by India and Israel on Pakistan’s nuclear program rattled Zia, who sent Khan and an unnamed Pakistani general to Beijing with a request in mid-1982 to borrow enough bomb-grade uranium for a few weapons.

After winning Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's approval, Khan, the general and two others flew aboard a US made Pakistani C-130 to Urumqi. Khan says they enjoyed barbecued lamb while waiting for the Chinese military to pack the small uranium bricks into lead-lined boxes, 10 single-kilogram ingots to a box for a total of 50 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU), for the flight back to Islamabad. "The Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us kg50 enriched uranium," Khan wrote in letter to his wife Henny which was meant to be an expose to get even with the military, which locked him up on proliferation charges even though Khan says they were part of the transactions approved by all governments that came to power in Islamabad, civilian or military.

By Khan’s account, Pakistan did not initially use the Chinese fissile material and kept it in storage till 1985 because they had made a “few bombs” with their own material. The Pakistanis then asked Beijing if it wanted its nuclear material back. After a few days, Khan says the Chinese wrote back "that the HEU loaned earlier was now to be considered as a gift... in gratitude" for Pakistani help. The Pakistanis promptly used the Chinese material to fabricate hemispheres for two weapons and added them to Pakistan's arsenal.

Khan sees this act of stealing, begging and borrowing to make the bomb as a supreme accomplishment by Pakistan. "The speed of our work and our achievements surprised our worst enemies and adversaries and the West stood helplessly by to see a Third World nation, unable even to produce bicycle chains or sewing needles, mastering the most advanced nuclear technology in the shortest possible span of time," he boasts in a separate 11-page narrative that the Post said he wrote for Pakistani intelligence officials.

Through all the skullduggery, it appears that Beijing continued to lie baldly even as Washington lived in blissful ignorance through occasional lurking suspicion. Time and again, Chinese officials lied about adhering to the international duty of prevention the proliferation of nuclear weapons. US officials too hummed and hawed about the transactions because at the height of the Islamabad-Beijing exchanges, Washington was dependent on Pakistan to rout Soviet Union from Afghanistan and it was also warming up to Beijing, where the senior George Bush had served as the US envoy before returning to Washington DC as the CIA Director and then becoming vice-president under Ronald Reagan.

But the big question now is what Barack Obama will do about a transaction the Washington Post called ''an exceptional, deliberate act of proliferation by a nuclear power.'' The US President, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his activism on several fronts, including his intent to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, arrives in Beijing on Tuesday on a swing through East Asia that will take him to Japan and South Korea, two other US allies also concerned about China. Unless Obama takes note of the disclosures and acts on them, he will be seen to joining a long list of US Presidents, including Reagan, Bush, Clinton, whose concern about proliferation were largely cosmetic and selective, resulting in a free pass to China and Pakistan.
How China gifted 50kg uranium for two bombs to Pakistan - Pakistan - World - The Times of India

More skeletons coming out of the closet. Its amazing how the US still remains silent on such matters. The worlds most powerful nation could not get AQ Khan to interrorgate and now it takes a letter from that same man to spill the beans. In the quest of strategic one up manship, the world is in a big mess as far as nuke proliferation is concerned.
 

ppgj

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More skeletons coming out of the closet. Its amazing how the US still remains silent on such matters.
they will be silent to the world because their own hands are dirty.

The worlds most powerful nation could not get AQ Khan to interrorgate and now it takes a letter from that same man to spill the beans.
CIA, US govt have always known what all was happening. they willingly allowed AQK to do all that he did 'cos they wanted pakistan's help to drive away the soviets from a'stan. so what would they quiz AQK? they can if they want to but they wont.
now because of the danger of nukes falling into terror hands, they are more worried on the safety of the nukes. they are not interested in quizzing AQK about what they already know about.

In the quest of strategic one up manship, the world is in a big mess as far as nuke proliferation is concerned.
this news report is planned leak just to put china on the backfoot so they don't go on a different tangent vis-a-vis T-bonds etc.
they want china to prop up american economy.
 

mattster

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Now imagine how this will look for China if one of Pak's nuke weapons ever ends up in the hands of terrorist or Jihadis and they end up using it against one of their targets.

The Chinaman has stuck his finger in the pickle jar and now he cant get it out.

The Chinese want respect and global status but they always act like small-time punks.

The "end always justifies the means" for them.

Today, they are supplying arms to some of the worst most depraved regimes in the world in exchange for mineral and energy rights.

Their "sissy-fit attitude" towards the Dalai Lama and trying to intimidate any country that hosts the Dalai Lama is another pathetic example of how China becomes so small in the eyes of the world.

During the Olympics they tried it on the French, and Sarkozy told them to f*ck off.

And Finally for the coup de gras - China is the only major nation in the history of the planet that can claim the honour of kidnapping a 6 year old boy (the child Panchen Lama who was selected by the current Dalai Lama to be the next Dalai Lama)

Isnt it just absolutely mind-boggling that despite all those Dong-feng Missiles that China has; they are still scared of a 6 year old boy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Chinese leadership is an isolated leadership which is out of touch with global human values

China has no soft power whatsoever.....the only power they can project is thru economic and military muscle.
 

nitesh

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I expect more such news coming out as US needs more handles to control China not trying to say the treasury bonds are useless :D
 
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How China gifted 50kg uranium for two bombs to Pakistan - Pakistan - World - The Times of India

How China gifted 50kg uranium for two bombs to Pakistan

WASHINGTON: China’s dirty little secret of nuclear proliferation to Pakistan, including virtually giving Islamabad two nuclear weapons on a platter
while the US remained oblivious and smug, has exploded in Washington. Embarrassingly for President Barack Obama, the disclosures come on the eve of his much-anticipated visit to Beijing.

The broad story is known to every Tom, Dinesh, and Hamid in strategic circles — that sometime in the early 1980s, China provided Pakistan with nuclear know-how and materials to enable it to make the bomb, in part to weigh down India and in part out of gratitude to Islamabad for facilitating its opening to US. But astonishing details of the transaction, which China has blithely denied because it is in violation of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations, have been exposed courtesy A.Q.Khan, Pakistan’s Dr Strangelove, to spite the military which incarcerated him.

In a letter that Khan sent to British journalist Simon Henderson, parts of which have already been made public with the latest dribble coming out ahead of Obama’s visit to China next week, the Pakistani metallurgist reveals the following sequence of an episode the broad contours of which are well known despite Chinese-Pakistani subterfuge for nearly 30 years: In 1976, some four years after India tested its first nuclear device, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto approached China’s supreme leader Chairman Mao in his quest for the nuclear bomb. By this time, Bhutto had already invited expat Pakistani scientists, including A.Q.Khan, to return home to help Islamabad make the bomb to ensure that the country was never again humiliated by India the way it happened in 1971.

Mao died soon after, but according to Khan, the matter was advanced in talks he and two other Pakistani officials, including then foreign secretary Agha Shahi, had with Chinese officials at Mao’s funeral. It was not a one-sided transaction: the Pakistanis told the Chinese how European-designed centrifuges (whose designs Khan had stolen) could swiftly aid China's lagging uranium-enrichment program.

"Chinese experts started coming regularly to learn the whole technology" from Pakistan and Pakistani experts were dispatched to Hanzhong in central China, where they helped "put up a centrifuge plant," Khan said in an account he gave to his wife after Musharraf purged him under US pressure. That letter eventually found its way to the Henderson who shared it with the Washington Post, which advanced the story on Thursday. "We sent 135 C-130 plane loads of machines, inverters, valves, flow meters, pressure gauges," Khan wrote. "Our teams stayed there for weeks to help and their teams stayed here for weeks at a time."

Initially, it appears China sent Pakistan 15 tons of uranium hexafluoride (UF6), a feedstock for Pakistan's centrifuges that Khan's colleagues were having difficulty producing on their own. Evidently, Khan had made the centrifuges from the designs he stole but did not have enough raw material to run it. Khan said the gas enabled the laboratory to begin producing bomb-grade uranium in 1982. Chinese scientists also helped the Pakistanis solve other nuclear weapons challenges.

By then, Gen.Zia-ul Haq had taken over the reigns in Islamabad and had hanged Bhutto. Rumors of a pre-emptive strike by India and Israel on Pakistan’s nuclear program rattled Zia, who sent Khan and an unnamed Pakistani general to Beijing with a request in mid-1982 to borrow enough bomb-grade uranium for a few weapons.

After winning Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping's approval, Khan, the general and two others flew aboard a US made Pakistani C-130 to Urumqi. Khan says they enjoyed barbecued lamb while waiting for the Chinese military to pack the small uranium bricks into lead-lined boxes, 10 single-kilogram ingots to a box for a total of 50 kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU), for the flight back to Islamabad. "The Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us kg50 enriched uranium," Khan wrote in letter to his wife Henny which was meant to be an expose to get even with the military, which locked him up on proliferation charges even though Khan says they were part of the transactions approved by all governments that came to power in Islamabad, civilian or military.

By Khan’s account, Pakistan did not initially use the Chinese fissile material and kept it in storage till 1985 because they had made a “few bombs” with their own material. The Pakistanis then asked Beijing if it wanted its nuclear material back. After a few days, Khan says the Chinese wrote back "that the HEU loaned earlier was now to be considered as a gift... in gratitude" for Pakistani help. The Pakistanis promptly used the Chinese material to fabricate hemispheres for two weapons and added them to Pakistan's arsenal.

Khan sees this act of stealing, begging and borrowing to make the bomb as a supreme accomplishment by Pakistan. "The speed of our work and our achievements surprised our worst enemies and adversaries and the West stood helplessly by to see a Third World nation, unable even to produce bicycle chains or sewing needles, mastering the most advanced nuclear technology in the shortest possible span of time," he boasts in a separate 11-page narrative that the Post said he wrote for Pakistani intelligence officials.

Through all the skullduggery, it appears that Beijing continued to lie baldly even as Washington lived in blissful ignorance through occasional lurking suspicion. Time and again, Chinese officials lied about adhering to the international duty of prevention the proliferation of nuclear weapons. US officials too hummed and hawed about the transactions because at the height of the Islamabad-Beijing exchanges, Washington was dependent on Pakistan to rout Soviet Union from Afghanistan and it was also warming up to Beijing, where the senior George Bush had served as the US envoy before returning to Washington DC as the CIA Director and then becoming vice-president under Ronald Reagan.

But the big question now is what Barack Obama will do about a transaction the Washington Post called ''an exceptional, deliberate act of proliferation by a nuclear power.'' The US President, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his activism on several fronts, including his intent to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, arrives in Beijing on Tuesday on a swing through East Asia that will take him to Japan and South Korea, two other US allies also concerned about China. Unless Obama takes note of the disclosures and acts on them, he will be seen to joining a long list of US Presidents, including Reagan, Bush, Clinton, whose concern about proliferation were largely cosmetic and selective, resulting in a free pass to China and Pakistan.
 

mattster

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It looks like both the Chinese and Pakistani embassies in washington have no comment on this story by the Washington Post !!!

Hmmmmmm ???
 

sandeepdg

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Now, this has truly brought the spotlight on China. All through the Chinese have maintained they had nothing to do with "A.Q. Khan and his nukes for every bad**s with money" network. Simon Henderson's possession of the A.Q. Khan letter is solid proof of how China illegally helped Pakistan acquire nuclear weapons and tearing every international treaty to prevent proliferation to shreds ! So much for their claims of being a responsible nuclear power !! And some foolish people question our commitment towards preventing proliferation !!
 
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The Pioneer > Online Edition : >> Generous Mao gifted Bhutto uranium for two bombs

Generous Mao gifted Bhutto uranium for two bombs

China provided Pakistan with weapons-grade uranium for making two atomic bombs in 1982, according to a written account by no less a person than Pakistan’s disgraced nuclear scientist AQ Khan himself.

Four days before US President Barack Obama visits Beijing for talks with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, The Washington Post on Friday published details of China’s “gift” of 50 kg of enriched uranium, along with nuclear weapon drawings.

The gift was part of a deal struck by former Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto with Chinese leader Mao Zedong in 1976, two years after India tested its first-ever nuclear device.

“Upon my personal request, the Chinese Minister….had gifted us 50 kg of weapon-grade enriched uranium, enough for two weapons,” Khan reportedly wrote in a previously undisclosed 11-page narrative of the Pakistani bomb programme that he prepared after his detention in January 2004 under US pressure.

“The Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us 50 kg enriched uranium,” he said in a separate account sent to his wife several months earlier.

Khan revealed that the uranium cargo in five stainless-steel boxes, transported by a Pakistani military C-130 aircraft from the western Chinese city of Urumqi, came with a blueprint for a simple weapon that China had already tested.

The blueprint was “a virtual do-it-yourself kit that significantly speeded Pakistan’s bomb effort”, the Post wrote, saying it obtained Khan’s detailed accounts from Simon Henderson, a former journalist at the Financial Times who is now a senior fellow at a Washington think tank and has maintained correspondence with Khan.

The paper said it has independently confirmed the authenticity of the material, corroborating much of the content through interviews in Pakistan and other countries. Hendersen has already disclosed several excerpts from one of the documents in a first-person account published by the Sunday Times of London in September.

“The speed of our work and our achievements surprised our worst enemies and adversaries and the West stood helplessly by to see a Third World nation, unable even to produce bicycle chains or sewing needles, mastering the most advanced nuclear technology in the shortest possible span of time,” Khan boasts in the 11-page narrative he wrote for Pakistani intelligence officials about his dealings with foreigners while head of a key nuclear research laboratory.

Although US officials have maintained that they have known about the transfer for decades, they have never raised the issue in public or sought to impose sanctions on China for the deliberate act of proliferation. In private conversation, the Chinese have sought to deny the transfer.

It remains to be seen if President Obama takes up this issue during his talks with President Hu in Beijing on November 17 as part of a discussion on nuclear proliferation issues.

Giving details of the Chinese transfer, Khan disclosed in his account that he and two other Pakistani officials, including the then Foreign Secretary Agha Shahi, worked out the details when they travelled to Beijing later that year (1976) for Mao’s funeral.

According to the account, Khan briefed, over several days, the three top Chinese nuclear weapons officials -- Liu Wei, Li Jue and Jiang Shengjie -- on how the European-designed centrifuges could swiftly aid China’s lagging uranium-enrichment programme.

According to the Khan account, Chinese experts started coming regularly to learn the whole technology from Pakistan, staying in a guesthouse built for them at his centrifuge research centre. Pakistani experts were dispatched to Hanzhong in central China, where they helped “put up a centrifuge plant”. In the account he gave to his wife after coming under Pakistan Government pressure, Khan reportedly noted: “We sent 135 C-130 planeloads of machines, inverters, valves, flow meters, pressure gauges…Our teams stayed there for weeks to help and their teams stayed here for weeks at a time.”

“In return, China sent Pakistan 15 tons of uranium hexafluoride (UF6), a feedstock for Pakistan’s centrifuges that Khan’s colleagues were having difficulty producing on their own. Khan said the gas enabled the laboratory to begin producing bomb-grade uranium in 1982,” the Post report said.
 
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Khan documents confirms Chinese help in nuclear weapon research - Physics Today News Picks

Khan documents confirms Chinese help in nuclear weapon research


By Physics Today on November 20, 2009 6:24 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
washingtonpost.com: In 1982, a Pakistani military C-130 left the western Chinese city of Ürümqi with a highly unusual cargo: enough weapons-grade uranium for two atomic bombs, and a blueprint of how to build one say accounts written by the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Khan is currently under house arrest.

The uranium transfer was part of a broad-ranging, secret nuclear deal approved years earlier by Chinese premier Mao Zedong and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

US officials say they have known about the transfer for decades and once privately confronted the Chinese—who denied it—but have never raised the issue in public or sought to impose direct sanctions on China for it.

The transfer also started a chain of proliferation in which Khan's nuclear smuggling network shared related Chinese design information with Libya and possibly Iran.

China's refusal to acknowledge the transfer and the unwillingness of the United States to confront the Chinese publicly demonstrate how difficult it is to counter nuclear proliferation writes the Washington Post's R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick.
 

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