East Asia

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.

Washington, D.C., January 12, 2001 – International Security has just published, in its Winter 2000/2001 issue, an article, "Whether To 'Strangle the Baby in the Cradle'": The United States and the Chinese Nuclear Program, 1960-64," written by National Security Archive analysts William Burr and Jeffrey T.

Washington, D.C. -- President John F. Kennedy and top advisers considered bombing strikes and covert paramilitary operations to destroy China's nascent nuclear weapons program in the early 1960s, according to recently declassified documents cited in the current issue of International Security, a journal published at Harvard University's Belfer Center. During meetings with senior Taiwanese officials, Kennedy's aides and CIA officials discussed the possibility of preventive military action against Chinese nuclear facilities.

Washington, D.C., March 31, 2000 – During late 1998 and 1999, the Wen Ho Lee espionage controversy and debate over U.S. corporate technology transfers to China made the Chinese nuclear weapons program the subject of heated debate in the U.S. media and in American politics.

Washington, D.C., December 13, 1999 – For more than 40 years, the United States has kept secret the fact that it once deployed nuclear weapons on two Japanese islands, Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima, according to an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' January/February 2000 issue. The article, by three noted nuclear weapons analysts, is a follow up to their article in the November/December 1999 Bulletin about the history of the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in 27 countries and territories around the globe.

Washington, D.C., October 13, 1999 – In recent years, India and Pakistan have made the front pages by testing nuclear weapons and defying the nuclear nonproliferation regime established by the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies during the 1960s. Nonetheless, the United States and international authorities have successfully discouraged other countries from joining the nuclear club. One such achievement (so far) has been to induce the Republic of China (ROC) to suspend activities that would brought Taiwan closer to an independent capability to produce nuclear weapons.

Washington, D.C., September 24, 1999 The relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) over the fifty years since the PRC was established on October 1, 1949 has been extraordinarily complex. Extreme hostility turned into outright military conflict in Korea. Rapprochement in the early 1970s became a strategic partnership during the latter part of the Cold War--a partnership that was followed by today's often rocky relationship. Today and for the foreseeable future China will represent a key focus of U.S. foreign and international economic policy.

Washington, D.C., June 1, 1999 – The relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China over the fifty years since the PRC was established on October 1, 1949 has been extraordinarily complex. Several years ago the National Security Archive initiated a project to shed more light on U.S.-China relations. The purpose was to obtain critical documentation on key aspects of the U.S.-Chinese relationship, with a focus on the years 1969 to the present.

Several years ago, the National Security Archive initiated a project to obtain critical declassified documentation on key aspects of the U.S.-China relationship, focusing on the period from 1969 to the present. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, collection of relevant publications, and archival research, the Archive has amassed a collection of more than 2,000 documents, consisting of over 15,000 pages, covering major foreign policy issues, U.S.-China security cooperation, technology transfer, economic issues, and intelligence.

The National Security Archive is today releasing on its World Wide Web site a set of recently-declassified U.S. documents obtained by Dr. Robert Wampler, Director of the Archive's U.S.-Japan Project, which shed important new light upon the role Okinawa and U.S. military bases on that island have played in U.S.-Japanese relations and American strategy in the Pacific. These documents were in part the basis for a documentary entitled "The Truth About the Okinawan Reversion After 25 Years: The Role of U.S.