Red spies in the sunset

Four arrests linked to Chinese spy ring�-�Nation/Politics�-�The Washington Times, America's Newspaper:

"Key compromises uncovered so far include sensitive data on Aegis battle management systems that are the core of U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers.
"China covertly obtained the Aegis technology and earlier this year deployed its first Aegis warship, code-named Magic Shield, intelligence officials have said.
"The Chinese also obtained sensitive data on U.S. submarines, including classified details related to the new Virginia-class attack submarines.
"Officials said based on a preliminary assessment, China now will be able to track U.S. submarines, a compromise that potentially could be devastating if the United States enters a conflict with China in defending Taiwan."

This looks bad, and it will likely appear much worse as prosecutors press for details of what was stolen as a part of plea negotiations. I just wish Bill Gertz hadn't struck the conventional note by referring to how we could suffer if we attempt to defend Taiwan. The truth is that the PRC's ambitions are no more limited to Taiwan than Hitler's were limited to Austria.

The PRC has, at various times since consolidating the Communist seizure of power on the mainland in 1949, annexed the peaceful neighboring country of Tibet, supplied over three million "volunteers" to the late North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung in his effort to forcibly communize South Korea, and fought border skirmishes with India, the former Soviet Union and Vietnam.

None of this bloodshed had anything to do with Taiwan per se, but it does represent the PRC's rather expansive view of itself as the heir to everything that China ever claimed to control. This is why China (both the PRC and the ROC on Taiwan, in this case) press their claim to the Spratley and Paracel islands with no attempt to negotiate with Vietnam and the Phillipines which also have ancient claims to these barren rocks and shoals which may be sitting on top of some considerable amount of oil.

That same imperial feeling of entitlement may easily turn China to be actively hostile toward Japan (not just abetting North Korean provocations) since Japan's Ryukyu Islands were a nominal tributary kingdom under the Chinese Empire as late as the 1840s. For that matter, Japan itself is seen by the Chinese as a part of the Chinese cultural zone in that it, like Korea, long ago adopted the Chinese system of pictographic writing. The virtue of that system for the Chinese was and is that it papers over the fact that many of the people who use it don't speak Mandarin or any other closely related Chinese language. For an appreciation of the rather flexible view which China's leaders have had over the millenia of what is and isn't theirs, I am indebted to The New Chinese Empire by Ross Terrill.

Let me close by saying that I have the greatest respect for Bill Gertz and believe he has done signal service to the nation by his reporting and in his books. I have just got round to finishing his Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 (2002).

On the subject of intelligence, I also recommend John J. Fialka's War By Other Means (1997). Fialka's book focuses on industrial espionage directed against companies rather than governments and deals with the actions of allies like France and Japan as well as enemies like the PRC and the former Soviet Union. It is structured as a series of case histories told in a journalistic rather than an academic style and is as easy to read as its contents are distressing.