China not enforcing WMD export controls: RAND

By Lindsay Beck

BEIJING (Reuters) – China lacks the ability to enforce
export controls on technologies used to produce weapons of mass
destruction, undermining its claims to be a responsible global
power, an influential U.S. research group said on Tuesday.

The findings reinforce what analysts say is a feeling in
the United States that China is not doing enough to stop
proliferation of weapons to countries like Iran, which is under
international scrutiny over its nuclear programs.

The RAND Corporation report says that while China has
stepped up regulations on exports of WMD-related technologies
in the past decade, it is still hampered by a lack of financial
resources and qualified people to properly implement and
enforce its own rules.

“These limitations suggest a lack of political will by the
leadership to seriously implement nonproliferation export
controls,” said the report by RAND scholar Evan Medeiros.

Earlier this year the United States imposed sanctions
against eight Chinese companies, saying they had aided Iran’s
weapons programs. It was one of about a dozen times that
Washington has taken such measures against Chinese firms for
alleged proliferation.

China said the punishment was not backed by evidence and
that it has laws to prevent proliferation.

But the RAND report said laws were only half the battle.

“The government’s ability to detect, catch, investigate and
penalize export control violators is significantly
underdeveloped,” it said.

The report said remaining challenges included a lack of
incentives for compliance by Chinese enterprises and the need
to educate new companies arising from rapid privatization about
their obligations.

But analysts said in light of the crises over nuclear
programs in Iran and North Korea, political will might be
growing in China to crack down on companies engaged in
proliferation of weapons-related technologies.

“China has been a significant proliferator in the past, but
there now is a sense that some of this is coming back to haunt
it and that international proliferation is something now seen
as a challenge that China’s foreign policy has to address,”
said Adam Ward, an East Asia security expert at the
London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

China has been playing host to six-party talks aimed at
dismantling North Korea’s nuclear programs, a role it sees as
key to efforts to brand itself as a world diplomatic power.

It also abstained from a vote at Saturday’s meeting of the
International Atomic Energy Agency requiring Tehran to be
reported to the U.N. Security Council over its atomic plans
despite initially being strongly opposed to the resolution.

Nonetheless, as of April only two cases of export control
violations in China had been made public, the RAND report said.

Chinese Commerce Ministry “officials also appear to be
unwilling to pursue investigations against large and
influential Chinese state-owned enterprises,” it said.