Beijing on Biohazards: Chinese Experts on Bioweapons Nonproliferation Issues

Edited By Amy E. Smithson

September 19, 2007

With relatively little information available elsewhere regarding China's policies, activities, and priorities pertaining to biological weapons nonproliferation, this collection of essays is first and foremost a reflection of the readiness of Chinese experts to discuss and address these extremely important matters. Second, these essays indicate that Chinese views on bioweapons nonproliferation policies and mechanisms are evolving. Third, these essays provide considerable information for their colleagues in the West to contemplate, to appreciate, to agree with, and to contest. These essays, in other words, are seeds for a dialogue between Chinese and Western policy analysts, scientists, and officials about the nature of the biological weapons threat and the tools that can be applied domestically and internationally to reduce the threat of biological weapons proliferation.

The individuals who prepared contributions to this volume number among China's top security analysts and scientific experts. Their qualifications are encapsulated below, but this report contains more complete biographies of this prestigious group. The complete essays can be accessed by chapter. An overview of the Beijing on Biohazards essays follows:

• Liu Jianfei, PhD, a professor and research fellow at the Institute of International Strategic Studies at the Central Party School, assesses the biological weapons threat from state and non-state actors. Liu sees bioweapons proliferation threat as being high, particularly because of the advances in the life sciences, and he posits that the most likely route to terrorist acquisition of biological weapons would be from states that perceive security threats from other countries and opt to put germ weapons into the hands of terrorists to divert their opponents' attention.
• Li Jinsong, MD, a professor at the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, explains the recent overhaul of China's biosafety regulations following the 2002 outbreak of SARS. Li notes that a shortage of biosafety specialists in China will create a challenge for implementing his country's new regulations and procedures to minimize the risk to workers and the public of laboratory research involving highly infectious pathogens.
• Hu Longfei, MD, the director and chief epidemiologist of the Guangdong Health and Quarantine Bureau, and a team of public health officials discuss China's biosecurity regulations and measures governing genetic engineering activities. China's biosafety system calls for tougher physical security and accountability precautions for work with high-risk human and animal pathogens, and separate approvals are required for genetic engineering work that involves recombinant DNA, infectious agents, animal or plant pathogens, and human blood or other potentially infectious materials, particularly for work that might make a pathogen more deadly, communicable, or could result in other worrisome changes to the pathogen.
• Wang Qian, an arms control and disarmament specialist in the Foreign Ministry, critiques China's new biosafety and biosecurity measures. Among other recommendations for improved domestic implementation, Wang suggests that China's new biosafety and biosecurity regulations apply not only to pathogenic microbiology laboratories but to all facilities in China working with high-risk pathogens, including hospitals, academic laboratories, and commercial facilities.
• Yang Ruifu, PhD, a professor at the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, relates lessons from his experience as a bioweapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq. Extrapolating from the results of the inspections in Iraq, Yang posits that inspectors can distinguish commercial and research facilities from those engaged in bioweapons activities and suggests that these inspections are a very valuable source of information about planning, inspector training, operational strategies, tactics, and technologies that could be useful to determine compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), which bans bioweapons development, production, and stockpiling.
• MajGen. Pan Zhenqiang (ret.), deputy chairman of the China Foundation for International Studies, advocates greater transparency in biological activities, the addition of a monitoring protocol to the BWC, a standing BWC inspectorate, universal adherence to the treaty, and assistance to states to improve pertinent domestic legislation and enforcement capabilities. Pan relates eight steps that Beijing is taking domestically to enhance China's own bioweapons nonproliferation efforts and identifies three areas where China could improve its activities in that regard.

The essay collection includes commentaries by two US experts, Julie E. Fischer, PhD, head of the Henry L. Stimson Center's Global Health Security program, and Bates Gill, the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Amy E. Smithson, PhD, a senior fellow at CNS, edited Beijing on Biohazards and provides background and introduction for the essays in the opening chapter of the report. The Carnegie Corporation of New York generously provided grant support for this project.

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