o.  Truths and Lies about Illegal Exports


    These are a long awaited results.  The documents this study
based on are from the US Department of Commerce and US Department
of Justice compilations of illegal export cases.  Mr. Eftimiades
apparently studies these data and essentially made distortions
on each number he keeps talking about in interviews, and 
consequently quoted in book reviews.  For example in a review 
from Chronical of Education, Mr. Eftimiades was quoted on 
this an apparently absurd number of 50%, which we will get
to more detail.


     It has become a fashion for many people, starting
from the author of the spy book, to quote some numbers in illegal
exports related to China to prove the Chinese spy activities
in the US.  We will just list a few statistics and give a little
explanations of some of the most popular quotations to show
how distortions are made.

1.  50% of the illegal export cases investigated on west coast 
    involves China.

    This statement is not really a lie, but a clever distortion.
People don't pay attention to EVERY words in this statement,
what people pay attention to is this 50%.

Problem with this statement:

a)  These are cases "investigated", not convicted or even prosecuted.
    All "investigated" cases are NOT espionage or even remotely
    illegal cases.  Any business can be "investigated", but most
    of them are found no wrong doings!

    Mr. Eftimiades himself had been "investigated", too, since 
    everyone in the intelligence community needs security clearance!
    It does not make him a spy for Greece!

b)  This statement is originated from a customs official in California
    6 years ago!  The illegal export cases involving China has since
    dropped since 1989 for obvious reasons.

c)  These cases happened in California, where there is a large Chinese
    population and a large concentration of businesses deals with
    China.  So it is not typical nationwide.

d)  Most of these cases involves HK being the end user, which has nothing
    to do with the PRC government that is supposed to spy on the US.  

e)  Many of the companies involved are non-Chinese Americans, while 
    no one has ever accused WHITE Americans for spying for China
    in CBS report and other book interviews!



2.  One in Eight (12%) of the illegal cases listed from the Commerce
Department involves China.

    This is what the CBS VP quoted in his letter.  It is from Mr. Eftimiades.
It is also a distortion.  The problems are similar:

a)  Half of these cases has nothing to do with PRC, they are exporting to
    Hong Kong, such as exporting electronic components to HK for assembly,
    and then probably import back to the US.  They have nothing to do with
    spying. So we left with 6%.

b)  Half of those 6% left are civil cases, which means they are not criminal.
    And non-criminal cases are not espionage cases, everyone knows about that.
    So we have about only 3% left.

    In the CBSVP's words, we have one in thirty cases that may be related
    to China's spying.  It is hardly a "big", not to mention the "biggest"
    network threat.

    This percentage is comparable to illegal export cases with the end
    user being countries that are American allies.

3.  The criminal cases from the Justice Department.  

    The truly reliable number of criminal export cases is from the Justice 
    Department, which compiles the criminal cases prosecuted through DA's 
    office all over the country, including all the cases investigated from 
    the Commence Department, Customs Service, the FBI, etc, in the last 12 
    years.

    This number was quoted in Mr. Eftimiades' book, with the usual distortion
    of including Hong Kong and Taiwan cases into China, therefore creating
    a 6% of all cases.  This is lying!

    The fact is that HK takes 3% of the total,  EXCLUDING those cases when 
    products are exported via Hong Kong to PRC, which are counted as PRC 
    cases, not HK cases.  

    And Mr. Eftimiades or the CBS VP or other reporters don't seem to be
    interested even in this 6%!  Obviously 6% is NOT what they need!

    To list the figures more accurately of all the criminal export cases 
listed in "Significant Export Control Cases, January 1981 to October 1, 1993" 
compiled by the Justice Department:

Iran          21% 
Russia         8% 
South Africa   6%
Libya          6%
England        4% 
P.R. China     3%  (2.9%, or 9 cases out of 309)
HongKong       3%  (Hong Kong 2.6% and Taiwan 0.3%, 8+1 cases)
Switzerland    3%
Iraq           3%
West Germany   2%
Cuba           2%
Japan          2%
Chile          2%
...

    To conclude?  The Britishers have a bigger spy network in the US! 

    [In fact most of illegal export going the England are related to the
IRA, so we can't really blame the Britishers.]

    We see that all these US allies, England, Germany, Japan are all 
having illegal export cases comparable to China.  And Iran and Russia's
illegal export are real "threats" to the US, not those small 3%s.

    Another list, looking at the time span, the cases involving China are

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93
 0  0  1  2  1  1  2  0  0  1  0  1  0

     We can see that the most "active" years are around 83-87. Since then
there is a decrease of illegal export cases involving China, one in two
years in average!  This is because of the cool down of US-China relationship
after June 4th, 1989!