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New
Delhi, 15 May 2005
China's
is building up its Maritime Interests in the Indian
Ocean which are likely to clash with our own so we
should be careful .Trade with China has risen
rapidly to $14 b and Chinese
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao with a large delegation
visited India recently after a trip to Pakistan He
assured them that China would ensure Pakistan's
territorial integrity and on the other hand pressed
for closer relations with India. Both Dr Manmohan
Singh and Wen agreed to form a strategic partnership
to end the border dispute and boost trade in a deal
marking a major shift in relations. "India and
China can together reshape the world order,"
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at a
ceremony for his Chinese counterpart.
NSA
M K Narayanan signed an agreement with Vice Minister
Dai Bingguo in Delhi which envisages that the
countries would consider historical factors,
geographical features, people living in the area,
security and whether the area was currently under
Indian or Chinese control when marking the border.
This means China will keep what it has and so will
India with minor changes possibly in the Tawang
sector. Interestingly Vijay Nambiar India’s former
envoy to Pakistan and China took over as the Deputy
NSA. India noted that Pakistan had signed a joint
production agreement with China for FC 17P planes,
four F 22P frigates and was forced to delay the
opening the of the already completed Gwadar deep-sea
port for security reasons, which the Chinese PM was
to inaugurate. USA would supply 8 PC 3 Orions with
Harpoons and 24 F 16s.
China
like India has the great advantage of many ethnic
Chinese all over the world and it is known they use
them for intelligence and India should be aware.
According to a new Pentagon report and China wathers,
China is improving its far-flung system of human
spies, recruits, sleeper agents and electronic
eavesdropping in tandem with its build up of
conventional military power. Since the mid-1980s
China has developed the world's third- largest
capability, after the U.S. and Russia, to intercept
conversations and messages, according to the
``Intelligence Threat Handbook'' distributed to
Pentagon personnel.
“The
more they have an advanced intelligence capability,
the more concern there is about China's military and
weapons,'' said Jeffery Richelson, author of “The
U.S. Intelligence Community,'' which is in its third
edition. “This makes China's strategic clout
greater and demonstrates why many nations, and many
Americans, are concerned about a future threat from
China,'' said Larry Wortzel, a defense fellow at the
Heritage Foundation and former China analyst for the
Defense Intelligence Agency.
China,
for example, recently fielded a new land-attack
cruise missile similar to the U.S. Tomahawk that
will require precise coordinates of targets as well
as images to store inside the missile's tracking
system. Wortzel said, “The Chinese always have had
good intelligence but this handbook shows they are
focusing on specific needs for their military
improvement so the U.S. needs to be vigilant.''
Electronic
Intelligence
China
monitors signals from India, Japan, Russia, South
Korea, Southeast Asia and Taiwan, the 102-page
handbook says. “Signals from U.S. military units
located in the region are of particular interest to
these monitoring stations. There is no indication
that this capability presents a significant threat
to U.S. forces.''
Chinese
ships “monitor U.S. military operations and
exercises in the Asia-Pacific region,''
supplementing several dozen monitoring sites in
China and listening posts in Burma, Rocky Island in
the Paracel Archipelago in the South China Sea and
the Coco Islands in the Andaman Sea, the handbook
says.
“This
gives China extensive capability to conduct
sophisticated signals intelligence operations
throughout Southeast Asia,'' it says.
Still,
“while it is expected that China will improve its
capabilities –– increasing the collection threat
to the United States –– the majority of
intelligence will probably continue to come from''
spies and China's harvesting of unclassified
information such as Rand Corporation reports and
congressional documents, the handbook says.
Avoiding
Surprises
The
improvements accelerated after China's apparent
surprise in March 1996 at the U.S. decision to
dispatch the aircraft carrier USS Independence to
the vicinity of Taiwan, after China during a war
exercise fired missiles over the island in protest
against its first presidential election, the
commander of the U.S. Air Forces in the Pacific
said.
“When
you get ‘surprised' as a nation you want to ask
yourself whether you want to be surprised again or
whether you want to develop capability to not be
surprised,'' General Paul Hester, the commander of
Pacific Air Forces told reporters in an April 28
breakfast meeting.
“They
are developing the capability to not be surprised
and to be able to see further away from their
shoreline than they could in 1996.'' Hester said.
China
now has only a limited ability to take spy satellite
photos and uses that to collect images over Russia
although U.S. intelligence agencies believe that
China will “probably develop'' a satellite camera
system capable of snapping ground images of higher
resolution, the handbook says. It does not say when
this capability will be achieved.
Human
Spies
China
has the potential for a robust human spy system
within the U.S.–– seven diplomatic
establishments and 2,750 commercial offices in
addition to an estimated 100,000 current and former
students from the Peoples Republic, the handbook
said. In addition, 27,000 PRC delegates visit the
U.S. annually, it said.
Chinese
intelligence makes an active effort to recruit
Chinese-Americans, although “there is no evidence
that the PRC considers Chinese-Americans to be more
vulnerable to approach than any other group,” the
book said.
“Chinese
human intelligence operations rely on collecting a
small amount of information from a large number'' of
ethnic Chinese, it said. “The PRC attempts to
recruit or at least ‘make friends' with as many
Chinese-Americans as possible, apparently hoping
that at least some will perceive an obligation to
help China, perhaps on a confidential basis.''
This
strategy, while not “particularly efficient,'' has
the potential to “overwhelm U.S. law enforcement
and counter-intelligence because of the sheer
quantity of operations they undertake,'' the book
says.
Wortzel
said the depiction of China's human spying tactics
is “realistic.'' ‘The characterisations of the
use of ethnic Chinese- Americans in espionage is
realistic and has no, repeat no tinge of racism,''
he said. China has also despatched agents as
longterm sleepers and the Embassy in Chanakyapuri is
big and very interesting to watch. US believes
if large numbers of PRC nationals leave China and
settle permanently in the U.S., “some of them may
some day find their way into positions of
intelligence potential,'' the books says.
The
handbook is the latest edition of a publication
first released in 1995. It's produced by the
Pentagon's Greenbelt, Maryland-based Operational
Security Support Staff. “The material makes it the
most authoritative unclassified U.S. government
publication on foreign intelligence operations
directed against U.S. government and commercial
institutions,'' Richelson said. “Basically it is a
pretty good document that can be used by government
security officers to sensitize government employees
to Chinese espionage through defensive security
education and counterintelligence programs without
being alarmist,'' Wortzel said.
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