The Consequences of Nuclear
Tests in Eastern Turkestan
This document was reproduced by
permission from the Eastern Turkestan Union in Europe
The Consequences of Nuclear Tests in Eastern Turkestan China's nuclear
tests in Eastern Turkestan for more than three decades have produced an
ecological disaster, not only endangering human life but also polluting drinking
water, food supplies and affecting millions of animals throughout the country.
There are no official figures of the nuclear victims in Eastern Turkestan. But
it has been reported that more than 200,000 people in Eastern Turkestan have
died because of nuclear fallout. Radioactive fallout from the nuclear
testing site at Lop Nor is causing an increase in human cancer. It has been
reported that ten per cent of the population are ill with cancer in that
country. Before the nuclear tests the rate of cancer mortality in Eastern
Turkestan was rather low. According to the reports between 1975 and 1985 the
rate of leukemia increased 7 times in comparison with the previous ten years.
The rate of mortality from oesophagos cancer is 7-8 times higher than that of
the rest of China. Almost 40 percent of adults suffer from various forms of
nervous disorder while 70 percent of women have pathology which provoke
complications during pregnancy and birth. Seventy percent of women suffer from
vaginal cancer. And 85 percent of the population suffer from leucopenia.
As a result, babies with horrible deformities are born, for example, two-headed,
without kidneys, mentally retarded, and even mutants who cannot be recognized as
human beings. It has also been reported that during
February and March 1987, almost 800 Uighurs died in the cities of Lop,
Charkalik, Cherchen, Keriya, Chira and Hoten of an unidentified disease. The
same kind of deaths have been reported in other parts of Eastern Turkestan. The
World Health Organization said in a report released in 1988, that 3,961 people
died in the cities of Hoten, Yarkent and Kashgar of an unknown disease.
According to the reports in July and August, 1990, in the surroundings of
Kashgar over 5,000 youth's arms and feet were paralyzed and lost their eyesight.
160 kids born in the city of Chatan in August 1991, had cataracts in their eyes.
Most importantly, the polluted districts bordering the nuclear test site did not
even receive elementary medical treatment the report said. Doctors rushed to the
areas to check the victims were forced lie to the people about their deadly
illness. During the more than 30 years of nuclear testing in Eastern Turkestan,
no medical investigations were carried out. Moreover, at the beginning of the
nuclear tests, the people living in the immediate areas of Lop Nor were never
evacuated. In later stages, when they were evacuated, they were returned only
after a few days to the polluted areas. Animals were never evacuated. Those who
came back ate their meat and drank their milk. The peaceful demonstrations
of the peoples of Eastern Turkestan living at home and abroad demanding the
closure of the nuclear testing site have so far received no results.
Also read this report in a
relative subject: From: Mavlan Yasin/<MYasin@UniversalCare.com>/November 15, 2000 China prepares for war with U.S. over Taiwan
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Missteps and appeasement by the U.S. government helped China develop into a
dangerous global power, according to "The China Threat: How the People's
Republic Targets America" (Regnery), a new book by Bill Gertz, national
security reporter for The Washington Times.
In the third of three excerpts, he examines the growing danger of nuclear war
between China and the United States over Taiwan.
Use reality, make a noise in the east, but strike to the west. Cut time and
strike in multiple waves. - PLA Col. Wang Benzhi, on missile strikes against
Taiwan "DSP reports five events from known
ICBM bases in western China." The airman's voice was tense but carried an
air of nonchalance, a sign of rigorous training.
The airman was stationed inside a dimly lit command bunker nearly a mile
beneath Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain, along with 20 other airmen, soldiers and
sailors from the U.S. and Canadian militaries. This is headquarters for the
North American Aerospace Defense Command, known as NORAD. At NORAD, they think
about the unthinkable 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Closed to the outside world by huge steel doors designed to withstand a
nuclear attack, the bunker is where military personnel scan the globe from
computer terminals, looking for signs of missile launches. They depend on
infrared sensors around the world, primarily the constellation of satellites
with the nondescript name of Defense Support Program - or DSP, as the airman
said. The five "hot
pops" he reported as picked up by satellite over China were the first
sign of trouble. Less than a minute later came more bad news: "Sir . . .
we have multiple missile launches. Stand by for target report." A few
seconds later, the intelligence officer on duty broadcast further
details: "Intel indicates probable launch of five ICBMs from China. Intel
assesses this to be combat against North America." It was Sept. 3,
1999, and the Chinese missile attack was only an exercise. But it
was a sobering reminder of how the strategic nuclear threat against
the United States has not gone away with the demise of the Soviet Union.
A nuclear war with China over its dispute with Taiwan is a real danger. And
even though the Clinton administration went to great lengths to ignore it,
that danger is growing. Shortly after the beginning of the
simulated Chinese nuclear combat, five
red lines emanating from western China streaked across the computer map in the
command center. Each line represented the flight path of a Chinese CSS-4
intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, headed directly for the United
States. China's 24 silo-based missiles are old by American
standards. But they can hit targets more than 8,000 miles away and are the
backbone of China's strategic nuclear force. The missiles are
based on the design of America's first generation of missiles, which
China obtained from a defecting U.S. missile engineer. Each of the
CSS-4s carries a huge, 5-megaton warhead with the equivalent of 5
million tons of TNT - enough to blow up an entire city. NORAD's
computerized attack-warning network plotted the targets of the incoming
ICBMs and they appeared as dots on the giant map: Seattle, Colorado Springs
(site of the Cheyenne Mountain complex), Chicago, New York and Washington.
Air Force Col. Allen Baker, NORAD's director of operations, explained that
confirmation of Chinese missile launches would be followed by a call to the
White House. "At this point, I'd be telling the president how many
minutes until Washington, D.C., is gone," Col. Baker said. Flight
time from China to the capital: about 35 minutes. Asked whether the U.S.
military had the means to shoot down the incoming missiles, Col. Baker
said, "Absolutely nothing." The 'detargeting' lie A national
missile defense system to counter a limited attack such as this simulated
Chinese strike -or an attack by a single North Korean missile - is
being developed but may not be deployed for several years, Col. Baker said.
So why track the missiles? "We're tracking them so we can
tell our commanders exactly what is happening
so they can figure out what their response is going to be," he said.
"If they take out Washington, D.C., do we want to take out Beijing?
I don't know. That's their decision." NORAD's 1999 missile exercise
also showed that the U.S. military could not afford to give up its
strategic nuclear deterrent, despite efforts by the Clinton
administration to pretend it no longer is needed.
Only months earlier, the president had announced that U.S. strategic nuclear
missiles no longer would be targeted on China after the Communist regime
promised to "detarget" its missiles and not aim them at American
cities. On June 27, 1998, Chinese President Jiang Zemin appeared at a news
conference after meetings with Mr. Clinton in Beijing. He announced:
"President Clinton and I have decided that China and the United States
will
not target the strategic nuclear weapons under their respective control
at each other. This demonstrates to the entire world that China and the
United
States are partners, not adversaries." As with so many other
statements by the Chinese Communist leader, President Jiang lied. The
proof arrived in a form common during the highly politicized
Clinton administration. It was kept hidden from public view as part of a
classified intelligence assessment. On Dec. 2, 1998, the Pentagon's Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) reported
that that the Chinese People's Liberation Army conducted exercises that
included simulated nuclear missile attacks on Taiwan and U.S. military
forces in the region. The exercises, which ran from late November to early
December, involved
road-mobile CSS-5 medium-range missiles spotted by U.S. spy satellites
as they moved up and down roads along China's coast. The DIA report,
based on sensitive intelligence gathered by U.S. spying systems, also
cited activities by silo-based CSS-2s.
"They were doing mock missile attacks on our troops," said one
official who saw the report. A direct threat Analysts determined that the mock
nuclear attacks not only were targeted against Taiwan, but against about
37,000 U.S. Army troops based in South Korea and 47,000 Marines in Japan,
including 25,000 on the island of Okinawa.
A White House official, confirming the intelligence report, said both weapons
systems had "never been pointed our way before." But the official
sought to downplay the threat by noting the age of the weapons (the CSS-2
first was deployed in 1971, the CSS-5 in the 1980s).
The important point missed by the White House - intentionally -was that
the missile exercises directly threatened our troops. They also provided
evidence that Mr. Jiang's promise about detargeting was hollow. Or was
it? The Chinese president had referred to "strategic" nuclear
weapons. Apologists for Beijing argued that the CSS-2s and CSS-5s
technically may not be in the same category as longer-range ICBMs. The
Air Force's National Air Intelligence Center dispels that notion. In its
annual report on "Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threats," the center
stated that medium-range missiles "are strategic systems" armed with
nonconventional warheads. One
element of the exercises that surprised DIA analysts was the PLA's use of
"obscurants" -smoke and particle-filled clouds dispersed around the
mobile missiles to shield them from U.S. precision-strike weapons.
The Chinese missiles were seen ready for launch on mobile truck launchers,
although none was fired. Pentagon officials concluded that the simulated
attacks were a sign that China is prepared to go to war with the United
States over Taiwan. In August, the Air Force moved several
dozen air-launched cruise missiles to the island of Guam, perhaps
in anticipation of a conflict over Taiwan.
The PLA's 40 liquid-fueled CSS-2s, with ranges of about 1,922 miles, are being
replaced in most regions of China with the more advanced,
solid-propellant CSS-5s, with a maximum range of 1,333 miles. Richard
Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military, believes the Chinese may
interpret the June 1998 detargeting pledge to exclude shorter-range
nuclear missiles and include only long-range ICBMs. "Chinese
doctrine puts special emphasis on missile forces, concealing mobile
forces for obtaining surprise and using a wide variety of current and future
nuclear and non-nuclear warheads," Mr. Fisher said. Targeting Taiwan
Taiwan is a mountainous island about the size of West Virginia. Located off
the southern coast of China, it has a population of about 22 million. Unlike
its archenemy, Taiwan is a thriving, multiparty democracy. It also is a major
international trading power. Taiwan's military includes about 430,000 soldiers
equipped with weapons obtained primarily from the United States. But U.S. arms
sales to Taiwan were cut back sharply by the Clinton administration.
Meanwhile, China has dramatically increased its military forces over the
past decade. In October 1998, a DIA report labeled "Secret" outlined
a major buildup of short-range ballistic missiles opposite Taiwan. Until
1998, missile deployment had been modest and limited to a garrison of
CSS-6 missiles at Leping. What the DIA uncovered was a Chinese plan to
accumulate 650 missiles by 2005.
According to the DIA, China had 150 missiles near Taiwan in 1998 and
intended to add about 50 new missiles a year. The report said the new missiles
include two versions of the short-range, ballistic CSS-7 - Mod 1, with a
range of 350 kilometers, and Mod 2, with a range of 530 kilometers.
Last Dec. 5, the DIA issued another secret report updating the missile
buildup. The conclusion was not good news. "The DIA believes there
are at least 40 CSS-7 missiles in Chinese military
bases near Taiwan," said one intelligence official familiar with the
report. "This gives China the ability to target Taiwan with little
or no warning."
The report stated that China's goal was to have 500 short-range missiles
within range of Taiwan by 2005, allowing the PLA to target all of the
island's major military bases. "They will be able to take Taiwan with
little or no warning," the official
said. The report identified a third
missile base under construction along China's coast near the town of
Xianyou. Photographs by U.S. spy satellites showed the layout of
buildings and storage sheds was similar to that of the missile
brigade headquarters at Leping, base for CSS-6 missiles.
The report also identified a second CSS-7 base at Yongang, including storage
areas in tunnels. This was a sign that the Chinese were protecting the
systems against U.S. bombers equipped with precision-guided bombs and
missiles. Unchallenged threats Pentagon analysts
viewed the buildup as ominous, since it showed that
Beijing's intention was not to conduct aircraft or seaborne assaults but
to launch barrages of missiles. A Pentagon report to Congress made
public in
June stated that Beijing views ballistic missiles - as well as ground- or
sea-hugging cruise missiles - as "potent military and political"
weapons against Taiwan. And another, internal Pentagon
report obtained by this reporter warned that the danger from the short-range
missiles was growing.
"A large arsenal of highly accurate and lethal theater missiles serves as
a 'trump card,' a revolutionary departure from the PLA of the past," the
internal report said. "The PLA's theater missiles and a supporting
space-based surveillance network are emerging not only as a tool of
psychological warfare but as a potentially devastating weapon of
military utility." Even
after this reporter wrote an article for The Washington Times about the
intelligence on the missile buildup, President Clinton did not demand
that China stop the destabilizing deployments. Mr. Clinton, asked about
them at a news conference Dec. 8, said he had "grave concerns" about
the growing threat. "China is modernizing its military
in a lot of ways, but our policy on China is crystal clear. We believe there
is one China," Mr. Clinton said. The phrase
"one China" meant that whatever happens, the administration would
stand with Beijing.
The dispute between the mainland and Taiwan should be resolved through
dialogue and "we oppose and would view with grave concern any kind of
violent action," the president said.
But Taiwan never has threatened the United States. Communist China has,
and its threats went almost unchallenged by the Clinton administration.
'Not a wise move' One of the most alarming statements appeared Feb. 28
in Liberation Army
Daily, the official organ of the PLA that reflects the views of Central
Military Commission Chairman Jiang Zemin and other senior leaders. American
intervention in a conflict between Taiwan and China would lead to
"serious damage" to U.S. national security, the newspaper said. It
warned in
only slightly veiled language that China would resort to long-range
missile attacks against the United States. "China is . . . a
country that has certain abilities of launching strategic counterattack and
the capacity of launching a long-distance strike," the newspaper said.
"It is not a wise move to be at war with a country such as China, a point
which the U.S. policy-makers kn ow fairly well also." The
threatening article was written by PLA Col. Zhu Chenghu, an influential
hard-liner who is deputy director of the Institute of National Security
Studies at the National Defense University in Beijing. A war with China would
force the United States to "make a complete withdrawal" from
East Asia similar to the loss in Vietnam, his article said.
The Pentagon was surprised by the harsh,anti-American tone of what
amounted
to an official threat. But instead of criticizing China, Pentagon spokesman
Kenneth Bacon told reporters in a briefing that "Chinese doctrine"
does not include "first-strike" nuclear attacks. "And there is
nothing new in that article that changes that," he said. The answer was
misleading. The PLA commentary made no reference to a "first-strike"
attack, but to the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent or retaliation for
intervention by U.S. conventional forces in a war between Taiwan and China.
Document 65 The Chinese missile threat to the United States reflected official
policy,
as revealed in an internal military document obtained by dissidents in
China. This reporter received a copy of the report, known as
"Document 65." Dated Aug. 1, 1999, it is signed "General
Political Department of the People's
Liberation Army." The DIA and CIA both have copies of Document 65, though
the latter is not
certain whether it is a genuine leak or a deliberate disclosure. Defense
officials say the format is similar to that of secret materials delivered by
defecting Chinese officials. Document 65 declares that "a most important
task" of the Communist Party of
China is reunification with Taiwan. All military units must "be
well-prepared for the war based on the rapidly changing relationships
with Taiwan," it states. That was the year Taipei declared it no
longer was the government of all of China and thus no longer sought to take
back forcibly what was lost during the civil war of the 1940s. Document
65 discloses for the first time that the issue of Taiwan would not be
allowed to "drag on indefinitely." The document says the Chinese
military was given "solid grounds for achieving reunification using
military power" because of Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's
remarks of July 9, 1999. On that day, Mr. Lee declared that Taiwan "has
been a sovereign state since it was founded in 1912" and called for
relations with China on a "special state-to-state" basis. This
was a challenge of Beijing's "One China" policy. The document
also states that the timing of reunification -peaceful or forceful - had
been hampered by the United States. It adds that Europe would not join
the United States in fighting a war with China. 'Better to fight now
Document 65 reveals what Pentagon specialist Michael Pillsbury has
called "dangerous misperceptions" by China about the United
States. It is just these kinds of misperceptions that could lead to a
war. For instance, Document 65 contains the following alarming passage:
"Taking into account [the] possible intervention by the U.S., and based
on the development strategy of our country, it is better to fight now than in
the future - the earlier, the better. The reason being that, if worst [sic]
comes to worst, we will gain control of Taiwan before full deployment of the
U.S. troops.
"In this case, the only thing the U.S. can do is fight a war with the
purpose of retaliation, which will be similar to the Gulf war against Iraq or
the recent bombing of Yugoslavia as far as its operational objective is
considered, namely, to first attack from the sky and the sea our coastal
military targets, and then attack our vital civil facilities so as to force
us to accept its terms like Iraq and Yugoslavia.
"This is of course wishful thinking," the document goes on.
"However, before completely destroying the attacking enemy forces from
the sea and their
auxiliary bases which together constitute a threat to us, even if we
successfully carry out interception and control the sky, our military and
civil facilities will still incur some damages." Document 65 asserts that
the U.S. military has not been tested in a major
conflict with a large nation such as China and will become
"exhausted" by long-distance warfare.
"It can be safely expected that once the U.S. launches an attack, the
front line of the U.S. forces and their supporting bases will be exposed
within
the range of our effective strikes. After the first strategic strike, the U.S.
forces will be faced with weaponry and logistic problems, providing us
with opportunities for major offensives and [to] win large battles." As
for nuclear war, Document 65 states, the Chinese military "does not
foresee" a strategic nuclear exchange because the United States has shown
no willingness to fight a massive conflict and suffer "major losses"
over Taiwan.