Democrats and the China Link

Two years ago President Clinton overrode objections from both the State and Justice departments to waive controls on the export of advanced space technology to China. At about the same time, California businessman Johnny Chung, who had close ties to government and business interests in China, was in the process of contributing $366,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Also at that time Bernard L. Schwartz, chief executive officer of Loral Space and Communications Ltd., which makes commercial satellites, was contributing what would eventually total $632,000 in soft money to Democratic campaign coffers.

Was there a direct link between these contributions and the exports to China approved by Clinton?

That remains to be proved, and proof is what House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he’s after with his plan to name a special committee to look at how the export waiver came about, whether it led to any compromising of national security and whether the Chinese government tried to buy influence by channeling money to the Democrats’ 1996 campaign. Why a select committee? First, it’s a way to bypass the abrasively partisan Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), the shoot-from-the-lip chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. Second, the small, eight-member committee headed by Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) that Gingrich envisages is likely to work discreetly and expeditiously. The less the odor of politics hovers over this investigation, the more credible its findings are likely to be.

Chung has told federal investigators that a big chunk of the illicit money he got from Chinese sources came from Liu Chaoying, a Peoples Liberation Army officer who heads the government-run China Aerospace Corp. Loral and Hughes Electronics Corp., which also supplied satellites to China, may have provided--perhaps inadvertently--data that tipped China on ways to improve the accuracy of its missiles. On Wednesday, in the wake of these disclosures, the House voted to halt all satellite exports to China. The House is also expected to approve Gingrich’s call for a special committee.

Gingrich has urged Clinton to postpone his planned trip to China next month. It would be premature to make such a decision now. But if solid evidence should emerge that the waiver on satellite exports was influenced by Chinese contributions to the Democrats in 1996, then a sweeping reappraisal of relations with Beijing would become all but unavoidable.