Few Americans have heard that the rulers of China founded in 1986 Project 863 for the development of post-nuclear superweapons, and even these few Americans often regard the event as a baseless invention of China-haters and warmongers, and the very conjecture that after the nuclear weapons of 1945 there may appear more powerful superweapons as highly improbable or impossible.

However, on October 7, 2000, the New York Times carried a report from Shahexin Village, China, about how China was developing its agriculture through genetic engineering, and was ahead of the United States in the number of "genetically modified crops." Tucked within two paragraphs was the explanation that this breathtaking progress in genetically engineered crops comes from Project 863, founded in 1986 to develop post-nuclear superweapons in genetic engineering and six other fields.

How had the New York Times reporter (Craig S. Smith) learned all this? I called him, and he explained. He had a Chinese assistant who read the Chinese press and Internet, clipped or printed interesting items, and translated them. Smith also told me that neither his editor, nor anyone else except myself had made any inquiries about his report-no one else had seemed to be interested in the development of post-nuclear superweapons in China.

If George W. Bush and his administration, including the CIA, has never had an assistant to read the Chinese press and Internet, they can at least have an assistant who would have clipped that New York Times report from China of September 7, 2000, called Mr. Smith, and asked about how to get more information on the subject from the Chinese press and Internet.

World peace has rested since 1949 on Mutual Assured Destruction by mean of nuclear retaliation. If China created post-nuclear superweapons capable of destroying or neutralizing the Western means of nuclear retaliation, the West will be at China's mercy.

But while China does not seem to exist for George W. Bush, his administration, and the U.S. mainstream media except as a remote benign area for trade, cheap labor, and American vacations, complete with Beijing duck, President Bush found in 2003 a small technologically backward country, Iraq, which allegedly endangered the world and required an immediate all-out invasion.

Even if Iraq's forces had really been armed with "weapons of mass destruction," similar to those with which the United States had been supplying Saddam Hussein in the 1980s for his war against Iran, these "Iraqi WMD" would have been laughable compared with what China has been developing since 1986, a glimpse into which Bush and his administration could have caught from the New York Times of October 7, 2000.

Even if it had been true that Iraq had bought uranium in Africa and would have begun to produce nuclear weapons in 2004, these nuclear weapons would have been laughable compared with the Chinese nuclear arsenal that began to develop in 1964, and one or several nuclear or thermonuclear tests were carried out every year, which Bush and his administration, including the CIA, could also learn from generally available sources in English.

In general, any person who has seen a world map and leafed through an "almanac" of world statistics understands that China is, geostrategically, a tiger, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a gnat.

The money the Chinese rulers have received due to Sino-Western economic cooperation runs into trillions of dollars-the Chinese rulers' fund for financing the development of post-nuclear superweapons and of conventional military might, including "ordinary" nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. The Chinese "government-controlled corporations": have burrowed deep into the Western economic entrails and can induce strategically important Western corporations to move into China, where labor is fabulously cheap. China has such prestige as a peaceful, prosperous, and quickly developing society that virtually any Western scientist will agree to work in China or for China, considering excellent terms China offers.

One specific example of this "cooperation" under President Bush may be not amiss.

Nanotechnology is believed by scientists all over the world to be a major candidate in the development of post-nuclear superweapons able to overcome the Mutual Assured Destruction.† The People's Daily announced on November 21, 2002, that a "nanotechnology center" in Beijing had been opened by the U.S. Veeco Instruments Inc., a worldwide leader in the relevant fields, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

For historical parallel it can only be said that this is like establishment by U.S. nuclear scientists of a "nuclear research center" in Berlin would have been early in 1939, when Hitler was still regarded as a champion of peace.

Not that China had suffered from a dearth of nanotech research. "CAS [Chinese Academy of Sciences] statistics show that more than 300 enterprises working on nanoscience in China, with some 7,000 scientists studying it." But Vecco will bring its "atomic force microscope and scanning tunneling microscope." As for the "Chinese government," it has budgeted about $240 million "for nanotech projects," with at least as much "due from local governments."

The phrase "quest for world domination" was applied to Hitler after 1939 and to Stalin and his successors up to 1963. But neither Hitler, nor Stalin and his successors, ever declared that they are after world domination. Quite the contrary, Hitler declared in Mein Kampf that he would stop the expansion of Germany westward, and would direct it eastward, against Bolshevism. Stalin was the author of the theory of "building Socialism in one country." For the Chinese rulers to declare that they want world domination would be to defeat their purpose and act contrary to all war strategists ever since Chinese antiquity. However, just like Hitler and even more like Stalin and his successors, the rulers of China have a special motive for world domination. In 1918 Churchill called for a war on Soviet Russia in order to destroy the "bacillus of bolshevism," subverting the West (Hungary became Soviet, and Germany was tottering on the Soviet brink). The tables have since turned. The Tiananmen movement of 1989 was yet another proof that the "bacillus of democracy" is subverting the multimillennial Chinese absolutism and has to be destroyed.

Now, what has been the behavior of George W. Bush toward China since he became president? Here were the headlines of news items in 2001 as collected by Howard Phillips, a conservative (certainly not a Democrat!), for his newsletter he has been sending to me:

BUSH OFFERS BEIJING THE OPPORTUNITY TO FIELD A NEW GENERATION OF MOBILE MUTIPLE-WARHEAD MISSILES

BUSH MAY LIFT BAN ON MILITARY TRANSFERS TO RED CHINA

BUSH AGREES WITH CLINTON: CHINA NOW HAS STRATEGIC "PARTNER"

BUSH EMBRACES "ONE CHINA"

CHINA'S PROMISES BROKEN WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES

BUSH HAILS JIANG [Zemin] AS A "GREAT LEADER OF A GREAT COUNTRY"*

The next two years, 2002 and 2003, were no different. Even the once conspicuous "human rights violations in China" has been ignored. To Bush China has been a remote, yet dear relative, to be graced regularly by favors and tokens of love and respect. On the other hand, a geostrategic gnat-the small and technologically third-rate Iraq, had turned, in the mind of Bush, into a kind of Hitler's Germany. It was so globally dangerous that President Bush would not wait for another week of the UN inspectors' search for those "WMD," laughable if compared with the post-nuclear weapons developed in China since 1986. Every day counted! Freedom or death! The population of Iraq accounts for a fraction of 1 percent of the world population. But it was imperative to bring democracy immediately to that fraction of 1 percent. The U.S. mainstream media were totally involved in the preparations for the "preemptive invasion" of Iraq and then with the invasion itself as though this were global war, on which the destiny of mankind depended.

France, Germany, India, and the United Nations did not support the "preemptive invasion," and President Bush had to rush into it without them, for the rescue of mankind brooked no delay.

While Hussein, a secular ruler, ruled relying on a secular minority (Sunites), the invasion liberated from their domination the overwhelming fundamentalist majority (Shiites), hostile to the United States and its democracy more than were the Sunites, led by Hussein. In this sense, Iraq is further from the West and its democracy than it was under Hussein, whom the United States had supported in the 1980s, and possibly no money or time will make the Islamic Shiite fundamentalists Western democrats.

President Bush has been facing a tiger (China) that can attack the West as soon as the Chinese post-nuclear superweapons are ready. But paying no attention to the tiger except for sending it occasionally favors and tokens of love and respect, President Bush crushed the gnat with the Pentagon's full power. But the gnat has been biting the U.S. forces daily. After September 11, 2001, Bush speechified a lot about the terrorist war in the United States. But the possibility of it in the Iraq "preemptively invaded" Iraq had never occurred to him.

In May 2003, China and Russia announced their military "partnership." But the United States was too preoccupied with Iraq to notice such a nonevent.

WHAT does this tragicomedy mean? The all-out war for survival against a gnat vs. favors and signs of love and respect for a tiger preparing to jump?

The geostrategic situation of the United States today vs. China resembles that of England vs. Germany in 1938. Indeed, the United States is endangered by China more than England was by Germany. The population of Germany was smaller than that of England and France combined, and Germany was to wage conventional war against them, while China has been developing since 1986 post-nuclear superweapons. Nevertheless it could well be feared in England that Hitler would defeat England and do with its population whatever this Genghis Khan would fancy. Hitler's ensuing "lightning" victories in Poland, France, and (up to October 1941, in Russia) confirmed this fear.

In 1939, Hitler made a mistake, fatal for himself-he grabbed that rump of Czechoslovakia that he was not to touch under the Munich Agreement. His invasion of Poland was presumably intended to invade Russia and "strangle Bolshevism" as per Mein Kampf. But his gobbling-up of the rump of Czechoslovakia? The two events, taken together, indicated that he was a conqueror for the sake of conquest. He thus deprived the majority of the English people of the possibility to continue to transform their fear into their belief or pretense that Hitler was not a new Genghis Khan, but a great German statesman and champion of peace.

What was the prevailing attitude in England to Germany before Hitler's fatal mistake in 1939?

The words "traitor" and "treason" evoke in the United States the image of an individual "recruited" by enemy (such as Soviet) agents. But here are these Englishmen whom no one ever recruited. They were inward traitors-traitors by their own inner decision. One of their motives was the fear that the enemy would win, and it was necessary to go over inwardly to the enemy side well in advance and please the enemy in order to let the enemy know that the gentleman traitor was aiding and abetting the enemy.

Edward VIII, "King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland," inwardly surrendered to Hitler, which was realized after he abdicated in 1936, visited Germany in 1937, and newsreels caught him giving a Nazi salute, which the English audiences did not see because the spot had been cut out as not proper to be seen by the common English people. How can the King of Great Britain and Northern Island be a traitor?

Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 not because he was suspected of having been a "gentleman traitor," but because he wanted to marry a divorcée, which he could not do as king. The scandal was shaking the English-speaking world-in particular, the U.S. press, for months. George VI, the successor to Edward VIII "created Edward duke of Windsor," and Churchill gave the "Nazi king" the governorship of the Bahamas during the war to keep him from Nazi mischief.

Edward VIII was quite prudent, as he did what numberless kings and princes had done before him when facing a powerful enemy, such as the Mongol Empire circa 1300. They pleased their likely future masters, and as a reward the Mongol Khans allowed them to continue to be the kings and princes of the Mongol vassal states. If Hitler had established his world empire, he would have made Edward VIII the king of Hitler's colony, possibly still named England.

Lloyd George, whom my Britannica (1970) introduces as "one of the most brilliant statesmen in British history," met Hitler in 1936 and said to the press that Hitler was "the greatest German," which Lloyd George told him "to his face." In the Daily Express of September 16, 1936, Lloyd George wrote that Hitler had "a single-minded purpose": peace. Yes, "with Hitler at the helm, Germany would never invade any other land." In a letter a year later, Lloyd George wrote: "I only wish we had a man of his [Hitler's] supreme quality at the head of affairs in our country today."

Was he "talking treason"? Well, what about the talk in 1938 of the "vast majority of the British people" about Hitler as a champion of peace?

The general English fear of Hitler had transformed in 1938 into the general English joy of peace with him. The "vast majority of the British people" hailed with exuberant or hysterical joy Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's Munich Agreement, which was treason in action, since it diverted public attention from Hitler's quest for world domination.

Chamberlain is represented in Western textbooks of history as a person so good that he considered even Hitler as good as himself. Actually, it was impossible for Hitler to conceal his preparations for aggressive conventional war. Had Chamberlain never read the English-language newspapers and books between 1933 and 1938?

As for Churchill, he was a lifelong Teutonophobe, no matter what political system was in Germany, and Hitler would have executed him even if he had never lifted a finger to declare war on Hitler.

BEFORE Project 863 was founded in China in 1986, no foreign power was likely to defeat, let alone annihilate, the United States. China may soon be able to do so. Well, in 1945, the United States confronted Japan with annihilation (Japan did not know how many nuclear bombs the United States had) or unconditional surrender. The geostrategic situation has since changed. Today, China may well hope to confront the United States with annihilation unless the United States surrenders unconditionally.

I cannot believe that President George W. Bush has never known what the New York Times reported (however obliquely) from China on September 7, 2000: the founding in 1986 of Project 863 for the development of post-nuclear superweapons in (at that time) seven fields, including genetic engineering. Yet Bush and his three predecessors have never noticed Project 863, and the New York Times report in 2000 was in vain. In Clinton's mind, there was a remarkable transformation of the "butchers of Beijing" into "strategic partners." After his election campaign, in which he called China a "strategic competitor," Bush picked up Clinton's newly found love of China.

Chamberlain did not know how to cope with the "German threat." So he invented the Munich Agreement-a scrap of paper, saying that he, Hitler, was all for peace (see Lloyd George's revelations above). The English (French or American) appreciation of the scrap of paper was tremendous, and never subsided until Hitler grabbed the rump of Czechoslovakia.

George W. Bush cannot repeat Chamberlain's scrap-of-paper stunt, since no one believes any more in such scraps of paper. Besides, what could such scraps of paper say? That China undertakes to preserve peace even when its post-nuclear superweapons become able to annihilate the United States without the latter's nuclear retaliation, since China will destroy all Western means of nuclear retaliation? Such an agreement will be more disturbing than the present U.S. innocence of existence of Project 863 in China.

Besides, George W. Bush "sat out" the Vietnam War, which was (at least at the beginning) a holy war of freedom against Communism. The electorate could well conclude that he is afraid of China because he is a coward. For Bush, his diversion had to include a display of his military bravery.

The "preemptive invasion" of Iraq was such a diversion. For a good half-year, the electorate saw war theatricals intended to show George W. Bush, who had "sat out" the Vietnam War, as a Napoleon except that instead of galloping on horseback up a steep mountain, he was steaming, in an air pilot's suit, aboard a war ship.

Ironically, Wang Jisi, Director of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, has recently declared that he is totally pleased with only one of the two faces of George W. Bush. He praises "Bush's smiling face toward China."* Bush "welcomed former Chinese President Jian Zemin at his Texas ranch. Bush has called China a 'friend,' leaving behind his campaign rhetoric about China being [Good Heavens!] a 'strategic competitor'." At the same time, Wang Jisi condemns the second face of Bush-his "ferocious visage" with which he invaded Iraq.

Wang Jisi assumes that "Bush's smiling face toward China" is caused by the unique virtues of China as a result of which China and no other country keeps Bush smiling. Wang Jisi does not understand that in order to confront China with an invariably smiling face, Bush should have had with respect to Iraq the ferocious visage of a heroic warrior, or the electorate will decide that he keeps smiling to China out of fear-that he has surrendered to China well in advance and has been trying to please its rulers as much as he can, including smiling to China, no matter what.