Top US officials are criticizing what they call China's indiscriminate sales of weapons to rogue countries, suggesting that Beijing's shortsighted policies had made the world more dangerous.
Peter Rodman, US assistant secretary of defense for international security, urged China on Thursday to re-evaluate its relationship with Iran and North Korea, two countries with which the US is locked in tense nuclear standoffs.
"China's actions seem to us dangerously shortsighted," Rodman told the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an advisory panel created by Congress.
"China's proliferation behavior, past and present, can come back to haunt it, even placing its own political interests in jeopardy," he said.
The US, Rodman said, sees "in China a general willingness to transfer a wide variety of technologies to customers around the world."
He mentioned Iran, Sudan, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Venezuela and even linked China to North Korea's test launches in July of seven missiles and to Hezbollah's use of Chinese-designed cruise missiles against an Israeli naval vessel, also in July.
Rodman said that the US worries that Chinese companies have helped Iran as it tries to establish a self-sufficient ballistic missile production program. China wants to build relations with Iran, Rodman said, to secure access to its oil and gas and, potentially, to find ways to control its own sometimes restive Muslim populations.
China says it opposes the spread of weapons technology and materials, and it prohibits Chinese companies from trans-ferring such material. Rodman said Beijing has strengthened its nonproliferation efforts by promoting export control laws and its oversight of those laws.
Paula DeSutter, the US State Department's lead official for verifying nonproliferation compliance, said, however, that despite repeated assurances from Beijing, the US is "deeply concerned about the Chinese government's commitment toward its nonproliferation obligations."
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