Charles R. Smith
Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2001

Unit 731 operations included poisoning wells in test villages, dropping plague-infested fleas from planes and spraying whole areas with anthrax. By the end of the war, Unit 731 produced a stockpile of more than 200 kilograms of anthrax and developed aerial bombs to disperse the deadly disease over wide areas.

In addition, Ishii's Unit 731 established a test center inside an Allied POW camp in Mukden China. Unit 731 killed hundreds of American prisoners, using them as live targets for biological test weapons.

During his tenure in China, Ishii killed an estimated 200,000 Chinese civilians using plague, anthrax and germ weapons. Gen. Tojo and Emperor Hirohito personally approved Ishii's operations. Ishii, his men and the emperor were never charged with war crimes.

After Sept. 11, 2001, the world turned upside down. China is the only nation bordering Afghanistan that does not support the allied efforts. Even Iran, a longtime foe of the United States, has quietly assisted American authorities with intelligence data.

Yet, China is not listed nor mentioned in any dispatch by official U.S. government sources as supporting the global effort to stop the reign of terror. The new diplomacy between Washington and Beijing is seen as a bribe to convince the communist regime to at least not oppose the campaign along its western border.

News sources report that U.S. State Department officials are seeking to relax sanctions against China in an effort to enlist Beijing's aid in the war on terrorism. The sanctions, imposed on Beijing after nuclear-tipped M-11 missiles were exported to Pakistan, halted the exports of supercomputers sold to suspected military facilities inside China.

Documentation, obtained using the Freedom of Information Act, shows that in 1997 U.S. Commerce officials approved supercomputer exports to Chinese weapons labs without an end use inspection.

In December 1997, U.S. Commerce officials sought permission to inspect Xian Jiatong University prior to the export of a high-performance computer made by Digital Corp. (DEC). American inspectors wanted to verify the Chinese university was not using the computer for weapons research. Instead, all efforts to inspect the site were denied by the PRC government.

In a letter written to Liu Hu, director general for science and technology of MOFTEC (Ministry of Foreign Trade & Economic Cooperation), U.S. Commerce Department officials noted that they were not given permission to perform the license check.

"We were disappointed at MOFTEC's decision not to allow an on-site end use check and refusal to permit an Embassy representative to travel to Xian Jiatong University at the university's invitation... Because we were unable to work through MOFTEC, we gathered information on the end-user through other sources and have approved the license."

The December 1997 letter to MOFTEC's Liu Hu reminded the Chinese government that it had signed a treaty allowing U.S. representatives to do a "post" export inspection. However, U.S. Commerce officials were reduced to seeking "help" from the Chinese communist government in performing the inspections and sought another meeting to discuss the issue.

In January 1998 the Commerce Department again contacted the Chinese government, seeking approval for verification inspections. The Commerce Department arranged for Bureau of Export Administration Chief Counsel Hoyt Zia to meet with China's MOFTEC to discuss the denied checks on U.S.-made supercomputers.

U.S. Customs Service officials also requested that they attend the January meeting. U.S. Customs Service officer David Brenner asked Commerce Official Mark Bayuk if he could attend the meeting.

Bayuk wrote in a e-mail to Commerce official Matthew Borman, "I told him rather flatly and abruptly, no." Bayuk described Customs Service officer Brenner as "not happy" because Bayuk felt that Customs had no reason to attend the January meeting.

Commerce counsel Hoyt Zia's meeting in January 1998 with China's MOFTEC official, Zhou Ruojun, failed to obtain Chinese permission for the inspections. Commerce documentation of the meeting noted that the Chinese denied all end use supercomputer inspection checks. Chinese MOFTEC officials argued that there "was no formal agreement between the two governments on conducting these checks."

The Chinese delegation also claimed that a 1983 U.S. trade letter agreeing to the checks "was unsigned" in the Commerce December 1997 complaint letter. MOFTEC's Zhou considered the matter "inappropriate" because the letter was unsigned. U.S. officials dropped the inspection issue "rather than engage in a fruitless discussion of the U.S.-side's 'understanding' of the 'intent' of the signed exchange of letters."

The Chinese diplomatic stall also continued for pre-export verification inspections as well. MOFTEC representative Zhou stated that she was "not in a position to talk too much about this." The Commerce document notes "she was unwilling to discuss this [pre-license inspection] issue any further."

Pentagon sources state that Xian Jiatong University is a center for the Chinese army's biological and chemical warfare research. Xian is one of the China's super-key universities directly under the State Education Commission. There are more than 1,000 such universities in China, but Xian Jiatong is one of only 10 sites included in Chinese army-sponsored construction projects.

Xian Jiatong University is located in the remote northwest corner of China near the city of Xian, the site of the underground Terra-Cotta Army of the First Qin Emperor. Xian is also a known location of Chinese Army weapons manufacturing sites such as the Xian Aircraft design bureau, which makes China's H-6 nuclear strike bombers.

The Xian Jiatong sale is the only known U.S. super-computer export associated with Chinese biological and chemical warfare. However, Beijing is known to have more than 1,000 U.S.-made supercomputers at work inside PLA weapon labs.

Pentagon sources are convinced that the Chinese army is using the supercomputer to develop a chemical cluster "bomblet" munition to arm missiles and bombers. Instead of a single warhead, a bomblet warhead would disperse hundreds of miniature biotoxin-filled grenades each filled with a deadly payload over a vast area.

The short-term efforts by the present U.S. administration to bribe Beijing into being a good global citizen are misguided and dangerous. The temptation to enlist China's good will with advanced technology exports overwhelmed the last administration. The result transformed the Chinese army's nuclear weapons labs into state-of-the-art facilities. We cannot afford to make the same mistake again.

Before World War II, China suffered directly under the bio-bomb. Chinese authorities erected a museum in Harbin where Unit 731 engaged in its deadly experiments on living subjects.

The present-day efforts by Beijing to improve on the horrific science of death started so long ago by Imperial Japanese Gen. Ishii is living testimony to the foolishness of mankind.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bioterrorism

Bush Administration

China/Taiwan

Clinton Scandals

War on Terrorism

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