In this environment, the evolution of nuclear technology in China could not have depended on a single incident of espionage. Closely related is the issue of whether China got illegal help to make rockets more reliable and accurate. The Chinese invented rocket technology over a thousand years ago. They have been orbiting satellites since 1969, thirty years. China s rockets, as those in the U.S., are primarily used to launch satellites to expand telephone and television service.
China also launches satellites for the U.S. corporations and others, on a commercial basis.
Improvement in communications is critically important for economic modernization in China. It is very difficult to avoid sharing technical insights in multi-national corporate environments that benefit the United States. We can not avoid the dilemma that improvements in rockets to launch communications satellites will inevitably have spill-over implications for military development. Even if China is miniaturizing nuclear warheads and improving missile accuracy, it is not clear that this harms our security interests. Moreover, the political, military, and moral implications of taking out a city of millions of people were so enormous that a threat of retaliation was not fully credible.