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STRATFOR.com
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THE INTERNET SOURCE FOR GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE
If it’s in the news, it’s too late...
China Turns Up the Heat on Sino-U.S. Relations
January 23, 2002
President George W. Bush is scheduled to travel to China next month to meet with Chinese leaders. An advance team is going to Beijing next weekend to prepare for the summit. Chinese leaders did a little preparation of their own this weekend, turning up the heat on the United States in two ways.
First, Beijing released information that more than 20 sophisticated listening devices had been discovered on an aircraft fitted in the United States for President Jiang Zemin's personal use. China made it clear that Jiang was furious over the bugs, with the implication that the Central Intelligence Agency was behind the plot.
Interestingly, Jiang's rage was sufficiently manageable that China did not make an issue of the bugs until this weekend, despite reports that the devices were discovered during a September test flight. Even more interesting, Beijing confined its outrage to foreign media outlets. Thus far, there appear to have been no reports of the incident in China's media, suggesting that China is not attempting to sink the summit.
Second, China released a report claiming that Osama bin Laden has supported Muslim separatists in the province of Xinjiang. By doing so, Beijing was engaging Washington on a fundamental issue of U.S. foreign policy. The United States has argued that all nations should join against the common threat posed by al Qaeda. Thus, Washington has tempered its criticism of Russian operations in Chechnya, given the presence of al Qaeda operatives there. But it has not identified the Xinjiang separatists as terrorists.
(The Rest of the Story)
(c) 2001 Stratfor, Inc.
Dan
China Turns Up the Heat on Sino-U.S. Relations . . .