Washington, 31 December 1998
A select committee of the US House of Representatives has
concluded that US national security interests were damaged when two
US aerospace companies, Hughes and Loral Space and Communications,
provided China with technical information after the failure of two
Chinese Long March rockets carrying American-built satellites.
Both the New
York Times and the Washington
Post reported on 31 December 1998 that the committee,
headed by Congressman Christopher Cox (R-CA), had unanimously
approved a still-secret 700-page report, which also concluded that
over the past 20 years, China had been involved in a serious and
sustained effort to steal the most sensitive of American military
technology, including nuclear weapons designs and high-performance
computers.
The Cox-committee, which was established in mid-1998 after the
Loral and Hughes affairs came to light earlier during the year, made
38 recommendations for legislative and executive orders in areas
such as tightening control over the export of sensitive technology,
access to US national laboratories, and the handling of sensitive
intelligence data.