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1. Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a central role in formulating, coordinating, and articulating arms control policy. The Department of Arms Control, formed in 1997, is the central body in charge of implementing arms control, disarmament, nuclear nonproliferation, and nuclear export control policy. Arms control expertise is also concentrated in the fourth division of the Ministry's International Organizations and Conferences Department. The staff of this department is extremely well informed about both technical and policy issues, and, unlike many other organizations involved in the more technical aspects of arms control, individuals from this department are able to meet with representatives of the US government relatively easily. The Department of Policy Planning also plays a role in the formulation of arms control policy, while the Department of Treaty and Law analyzes the texts of proposed international treaty documents to determine their implications for China and provide suggestions for revisions that would make them more acceptable to internal Chinese constituencies. Personnel who are assigned to the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva report to the MFA while they are acting in that capacity. The MFA also has a think tank within its jurisdiction, the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS). This institute is staffed with some highly competent people, including ex-ambassadors, and has played an influential role in government policymaking.
2. Ministry of State Security
This ministry is the home of China's largest international affairs research institute, the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), which has about 150 highly-trained individuals who analyze the outside world and report their findings to the highest level of the Chinese Communist Party. Arms control and non-proliferation have not been major subjects of research for this institute, but there is at least one professional who works on them full time, and the attention paid to these topics within CICIR is growing steadily.
3. Industrial Ministries of the State Council
Several ministries supervise the factories that manufacture Chinese conventional weapons. Attached to them are research and development institutes as well as large foreign trade organizations to buy and sell weapons on the international market. The ministries involved in conventional weapons production include: Electronics, Machine Building, Shipbuilding, Aviation, and Aerospace (the last three are technically "corporations" rather than ministries, but operate as ministries within the bureaucracy).
The number of individual factories, schools, research institutes, and marketing organizations under the industrial ministries and corporations is in the thousands, and their degree of autonomy from central control seems to be changing as they become more financially and politically independent of central resources. COSTIND supervises the work of ministries and corporations that pertains to weapons production (all are involved in manufacturing civilian items as well).
Although not a ministry, the Seismological Bureau of the State Council is active in verification research to support the comprehensive test ban treaty. Representatives from this bureau participate in the Group of Seismic Experts (GSETT) meetings at the CD in Geneva. To date there is no counterpart for non-seismic verification research.
Chinese Arms Control Organizations: A Basic Primer
Originally compiled by:
Wendy Frieman
Director of the Asia Technology Project
Science Applications International Corporation
Revised and updated by:
East Asia Nonproliferation Project
Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Monterey Institute of International Studies
Updated 03/20/2003
This
material is produced independently for NTI by the James Martin
Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of
International Studies and does not necessarily reflect the
opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or
its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2007 by
MIIS.
