East Asia

Washington D.C., 5 March 2004 - The recent turnaround in Libya's nuclear policies and the many disclosures of Pakistan's role as a super-proliferator of nuclear weapons technology produced another extraordinary revelation: the discovery by U.S. and British intelligence of Chinese language material among the nuclear weapons design documents that Pakistan had supplied the Libyans. (Note 1) The exact subject matter of the documents remains secret, but the discovery was no surprise to students of nuclear proliferation or to China and Pakistan watchers.

Washington D.C., 5 March 2004 - Over the course of three presidential administrations, U.S. governmental officials repeatedly pressed the Chinese government to explain whether it was providing any assistance to Pakistan in the nuclear weapons field, but Chinese officials responded with denials and equivocation. New evidence from Libya of Chinese-language material among the nuclear weapons-design documents supplied by Pakistan raises new questions about the Chinese contribution to Pakistan's nuclear proliferation activities. Exactly what the U.S.

In their accounts of the historic February 1972 trip to China, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger focus on the February 21 meeting with Mao Zedong as well as the talks with Zhou Enlai on the Vietnam War, Taiwan, and the Shanghai Communique. Both kept secret one of the trip's more remarkable episodes -- Kissinger's top secret intelligence briefing to the Chinese on Soviet military forces arrayed against China.

Washington D.C. 11 December 2003 - Newly declassified documents posted today on the web by the National Security Archive show that President Nixon assured the People's Republic of China during his historic 1972 trip to Beijing that the U.S. would not support, but could not suppress, the Taiwan independence movement. These assurances, made in secret and not repeated in public for 25 years, are the basis for President Bush's current statements opposing independence for Taiwan - a constant in U.S. policy ever since Nixon.

North Korea's nuclear weapons program has moved back to the front pages with the unprecedented acknowledgement by North Korea during talks this week in Beijing that the North has developed nuclear weapons. News of this revelation came as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs James A. Kelly was preparing to leave Beijing for consultations in Seoul, and leaves the future of the talks uncertain and the threat of a potential escalation in tensions on the peninsula high.

The Lead-Up to Nixon's Trip to China: U.S. and Chinese Documents and Tapes

Last week, President Bush visited Beijing on the anniversary of Richard Nixon's visit in February 1972, the first presidential trip to China.(1) To commemorate further the Nixon trip, the National Security Archive and the George Washington University's Cold War Group of the Elliott School of International Affairs are publishing recently declassified U.S. documents on the Sino-American rapprochement. This material documents Nixon's efforts to make contacts with Beijing during 1970-1971 as the basis for rapprochement after decades of hostility.

Washington, D.C., June 12, 2001 – During the spring and summer of 1969, U.S. government officials watched the ideological and political split between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China escalate into fighting on Sino-Soviet borders. Some U.S. officials wondered whether the clashes would escalate; some even speculated that the Soviet Union might launch attacks on Chinese nuclear weapons facilities. This electronic briefing book of declassified U.S. government documents captures the apprehensions on the U.S.

Washington, D.C., June 4, 2001 – In June 1999 the National Security Archive published Tiananmen Square, 1989: The Declassified History, an online collection of declassified State Department documents pertaining to the events surrounding the June 1989 massacre by the Chinese military of demonstrators gathered in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The National Security Archive's continuing efforts have unearthed more documents from this episode, including CIA reports on the potential for political crisis in China as well as candid cables from the U.S.

Washington, D.C., April 9, 2001 –The ongoing Chinese-American controversy over the EP-3 aircraft that landed on Hainan Island on 31 March 2001 is the latest moment in a long and complex history of U.S. aerial reconnaissance activity over and near Chinese territory. During the Cold War days of the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA flew U-2 and other aircraft over Chinese territory, with many of the flights piloted by Taiwanese airmen.1 Other military agencies, the U.S. Navy and the U.S.