Julian Schofield and Micah Zenko
Pakistani physicists were trained in China in the 1970s, and Chinese nuclear
scientists were allegedly working at Wah and Kahuta in 1985.
China had sold Pakistan
nuclear technology in the 1980s, and between December 1994 and August 1995 (when
uncovered by the U.S.) it provided Pakistan 5,000 ring magnets for centrifuges at Kahuta.
China reportedly responded to U.S. sanctions by censuring the officials that had
sanctioned the supply of centrifuge parts to Pakistan, and committed in 2001 to joining
the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Though China pledged in May 1996 not to provide assistance to unsafeguarded
nuclear facilities in Pakistan, there is substantial evidence that Chinese support
continues.
However the Chinese continued to contribute to the construction of the
only partially safeguarded Chinese-designed 40 megawatt reactor a Khushab, which
came online in April 1998, and a plutonium reprocessing facility at Chasma.
These
would help Pakistan produce plutonium for its nuclear warheads.
China’s assistance to Pakistan’s missile programs fed into the 80-km Hatf I and
the 300-km range Hatf II, and the solid fuel 750-km range Shaheen missile (a derivative
of the Chinese M-9), which have put its program on par with that of India. The Shaheen
in particular has put New Delhi and Bombay within range of Pakistan’s retaliatory
capability.
The Chinese also provided Pakistan thirty-four short-range M-11 missiles
capable of carrying nuclear warheads 300 km sometime in 1991 or 1992, following an
agreement in 1989.
By late-1995 Pakistan was building a factory in Rawalpindi
capable of producing M-11 missiles based on Chinese blueprints.
When China was
sanctioned by the U.S. in June 1991 for its M-11 transfer, it confirmed that it would abide
by the technology transfer restrictions of the MTCR in 1992, but was again sanctioned in
late-1992 and lift again in 1994, 1998 and 2001 when it re-affirmed its commitment.
China may not have anticipated the U.S. reaction given its assertion that the M-11 missile
was a short-range system.
China had already earlier shifted towards support for the
China’s interest in trade is greater than its need to counter-
balance India with Pakistan.
China continued to establish domestic legislation to
restrict the ability of Chinese companies to assist Pakistan’s proliferation efforts, though
companies were still operating in Pakistan in 2002.
The current conventional
wisdom is that China has indeed been compliant with the NPT, MTCR and NSG, though
it remains a non-member of the NSG and seems to not require the IAEA to safeguard
facilities it helped build in Pakistan.
China’s main effect has been to accelerate
Pakistan’s nuclear and missile technologies, to the extent that Pakistan first series of tests
contained a boosted fission design.
Chinese nuclear sharing with North Korea
China’s assistance to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, despite its
adjacency to China, is intended to provide a challenge to the East Asian littoral in which
China is faced with substantial potential security threats from the U.S. and Japan.
China’s support of North Korea, beginning with China’s concurrency with Pyongyang
that there was no covert nuclear weapons program, does not in itself constitute evidence
of Chinese assistance, but does suggest that a nuclearizing North Korea fits into Chinese
regional goals.
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Convention