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China: White House to Not Lift Ban on Commercial Satellite Launches U.S. officials have said the Bush administration will not lift a ban on export licenses for commercial satellite launches on Chinese rockets in advance of Friday’s scheduled meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and Chinese President Jiang Zemin, the Washington Post reported today. China has long urged the United States to lift the ban, which the Clinton administration put in place in 2000 because of evidence of repeated ballistic missile transfers to Pakistan, according to the Post. To increase support, in recent months China has released several sets of export control regulations, including a set concerning ballistic missiles (see GSN, Sept. 3) and related technologies (see GSN, Oct. 21). While the United States is still examining these regulations, one official said they represented a good step. North Korea’s recent admission of its nuclear weapons program, however, has raised Chinese proliferation concerns again(see GSN, Oct. 18). There is evidence Chinese assistance to Pakistan for its nuclear weapons program was later transferred to North Korea, according to the Post. “The Chinese are very embarrassed by this development,” an official said (Kessler/DeYoung, Washington Post, Oct. 24). There is also evidence to suggest China might still be exporting missile technologies to a number of countries, said another official (see GSN, June 7). “We have seen real progress on a couple of the issues that we laid out as needing action and we have not seen progress on several others,” a senior official told Reuters. “We continue to see activities (that) suggest Chinese entities are exporting missile-related technologies to countries like Pakistan or Iran or Libya” (CNN.com, Oct. 24). Even if the Bush administration were to lift the ban on satellite launches aboard Chinese rockets, the move would be mostly a symbolic one since the market for telecommunications satellites is highly saturated, experts said (Kessler/DeYoung, Washington Post).
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