Thanks to Ronald Reagan . . . "trickle down", "off-shoring", "tax breaks", etc. etc.
Really....are you really that dumb.
Clinton Administration notifies Congress of approval to export technology to China to permit launching of communications satellite aboard Chinese rocket; says transfer will not harm national security or significantly improve China's military capability in space (S)
www.nytimes.com
How America Equipped China with Missile Technology
In August of 1994, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, flew to China to try
and seal two deals for American corporations. The first was to enable Chrysler the ability
to build minivans in China, and the second was to get the Chinese to buy 40 MD-90
aircraft ‘Trunkliners” from McDonnell Douglas.
The McConnell Douglas deal was particularly important to the Clinton administration for
a number of reasons. The company was dying; it was badly run by financiers who lacked
an appreciation for quality production. More importantly, it had lost a key military contract
for the F-22 in 1986, so the government felt an obligation to find customers to prop it up.
There was also politics, with Bill Clinton trying to honor his unofficial 1992 campaign slogan,
“it’s the economy, stupid.” Clinton would indeed hail the deal on the eve of the
1994 midterm election.
The Chinese agreed to buy the planes, but with
one caveat. They wanted a side deal; McDonnell Douglas should sell a mysterious company called the China National Aero Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC) a set of specialist machine tools that shape and bend aircraft parts stashed in a factory in Columbus, Ohio.
When Chinese representatives went to Columbus, Ohio, workers wouldn’t let them see the tools, because workers realized that they would lose their jobs if the tools were sold to the Chinese. The Chinese then sent a letter to the corporation saying that the deal for the Trunkliners was at a stalemate, but if the machine tools were sold to a mysterious Chinese company, well, that would have a “big influence” on whether McDonnell Douglas could close the deal on the planes.
It wasn’t just the workers who caused problems. The government could have been a hurdle for McDonnell Douglas as well, because these weren’t just any old machine tools. “According to military experts,” reported the New York Times, “the machines would enable the Chinese military to improve significantly the performance abilities -- speed, range and maneuverability -- of their aircraft. And if diverted, they could do the same for missiles and bombers.” Selling the tools wasn’t just a commercial deal, the machining equipment was subject to export controls for sensitive national security technology.
It was an insane idea, selling the Chinese government this important machining capacity. The Pentagon protested vehemently, as did Republican Congressman Tillie Fowler, who was on the Armed Services Committee. Fowler said allowing the transfer to reflects an ''emphasis on short-term gain at the expense of national security and long-term economic gain.'' And yet that’s what McDonnell Douglas sought, and what the Clinton administration pushed through. The Commerce Department cleared the deal, in return for a pledge (or behavioral remedy) that China would not use the tools to build missiles, but would dedicate them to a civilian aircraft machine tool center in Beijing.
McDonnell Douglas basically knew the behavioral remedies were fraudulent almost
immediately; one of the most important pieces of equipment was shipped not to
Beijing but directly to a Nanchang military plant. It wasn’t just McDonnell Douglas
who understood the con; Clinton officials
had the details of the deal, and let it go
through anyway. Why? They used the same excuses we hear today - competitiveness
and a fear of offending China. Here’s the NYT explaining what happened.
“American officials want to avoid sending any signals that would fuel China's
belief that the United States is trying to ''contain'' China's power, militarily or
economically. And they know that if they deny a range of industrial technology
to China, other competitors -- chiefly France and Germany -- are ready to leap in and fill the void.”
China never honored the overall deal. By 1999, China had
acquired only one of the 20 promised
Trunkliner airplanes. And three years later, the Federal government
indicted McDonnell Douglas
for “conspiracy, false statements and misrepresentations in connection with a 1994 export license
to sell 13 pieces of machining equipment to China.” The government also went after the Chinese company.
Still, this was too little too late.
The episode was by any metric catastrophic; the Chinese government got
missile making machine tools in return for a promise they didn’t honor, which
should have been a massive scandal, borderline treason. But ultimately it
wasn’t a scandal, because Republicans, leading globalization thinkers, and
Clinton Democrats decided that transferring missile technology to China
didn’t matter.
You are sadly misinformed....Bill Clinton was the culprit by FAR !
T