http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/world/29CHIN.html

BEIJING - Fearful that an antimissile defense could embolden the United States to intervene in crises on China's doorstep, Beijing is focusing on low-cost ways to thwart the plan, including ways to attack the defense system itself, China's top arms control official said.

"We have seen that the United States wantonly bombed Yugoslavia and that Yugoslavia had no means to retaliate," the official, Sha Zukang, said in an interview. "Once the United States believes it has both a strong spear and a strong shield, it could lead them to conclude that nobody can harm the United States and they can harm anyone they like anywhere in the world. There could be many more bombings like what happened in Kosovo."

Determined to establish its sovereignty over Taiwan, or at least to stop Taiwan from declaring its independence, China has steadily built up its military power in the region. In so doing, it has become a rival of the United States for influence in the western Pacific. The conflicting interests led to the recent collision between a United States Navy reconnaissance plane and a Chinese F-8 fighter. They ripple through the highly charged debate over American arms sales to Taiwan.

And now they are shaping the debate over missile defense, an issue that is moving to the top of the Chinese-American agenda as the Pentagon develops its plan for a missile shield.

Mr. Sha, a veteran arms-control official famous for his blustery style, spoke in English at the hourlong interview. He made plain that China's fear was not that the United States would launch a surprise attack on China, but that a missile shield would lead American politicians to believe that the United States was so powerful and well protected that it could act with virtual impunity.

"Even when national missile defense was not there they bombed the Sudan, they bombed Afghanistan and they bombed Iraq," he said. "It could lead to the development of a tendency of the use or threat of use of force, more often than is necessary by the United States, in the conduct of international relations."

Mr. Sha did not directly refer to the tense situation in the Taiwan Strait. But even though he talked of Yugoslavia, his comments reflected deep-seated Chinese concerns that the Pentagon would develop closer ties with Taiwan's armed forces and that a missile shield might make Washington more comfortable in rushing to the island's defense.

It is not yet clear when an American missile defense might be developed or how well it might work.

But some American officials say that an antimissile system could be useful in a future crisis over Taiwan. They reason that it might protect American territory against potential Chinese missile threats and could provide Washington with more diplomatic leverage.

Indeed, during the election campaign President Bush spoke of the need to defend against nuclear-tipped Chinese missiles. The dispute over missile defense is compounded by the modest size of China's nuclear force.

Unlike Russia, which has enough warheads to overwhelm a limited American missile defense, China has what arms control specialists call a minimal deterrent. So any substantial American effort to build a missile defense might neutralize China's small force - even if that is not the intent - and that is a big worry for Beijing.

Apparently in an effort to ease Chinese concerns, Mr. Bush has proposed a discussion on strategic issues in a letter to President Jiang Zemin, Mr. Sha said. China is willing to listen to any ideas that the Bush administration may have. But Mr. Sha said the dialogue had not yet begun because the Bush administration was still putting its national security team in place.

He also stressed that deep cuts in American nuclear arms would not placate China if they were made in parallel with the development of a missile defense. The Bush administration has been working on a plan for deep cuts in the hopes that it would make missile defense more politically acceptable to allied nations, as well as to Russia and China.

Certainly, the American force is so large that even deep cuts would leave the United States with an overwhelming advantage over China's small deterrent. China's long-range nuclear force consists of 18 DF-5 missiles; they are old, liquid-fueled weapons that are maintained at a low level of alert, and their warheads are stored separately. The United States has a triad of air-, sea- and land-based nuclear weapons. But China has no intercontinental-range bomber force, and its lone strategic submarine rarely leaves port.

To upgrade its arsenal, China is developing the DF-31, a solid-fuel mobile missile with the range to strike Alaska and the northwestern United States, as well as a long-range follow-up, the DF-41. There has been considerable discussion about how China might respond to a missile defense program and speculation that China might expand its projected arsenal of DF-31 and DF-41 missiles to be sure to maintain its retaliatory punch.

But Mr. Sha suggested that instead of engaging in a large, costly buildup, China would concentrate on a range of relatively low-cost responses, such as developing plans to attack the radar network and communication nodes that would form the nervous system of America's defense.

"We will do whatever possible to ensure that our security will not be compromised, and we are confident that we can succeed without an arms race," he said. "We believe defense itself needs defense. It is a defense system. It has many, many parts and most of them are vulnerable to an attack."

Mr. Sha did not say in detail how that might be done. But American experts say that the Chinese, for example, could target battle-management radar for the United States with land-based ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles, cruise missiles or other means. Another response, he implied, could be to put sophisticated decoys on missiles.

Yan Xuetong of Qinghua University suggested a possible compromise on the missile defense issue. The United States could build a system that could intercept no more than five missiles. That, he said, would protect against a possible threat from, say, Iran or Iraq without jeopardizing China's force. But the multitiered defenses the Pentagon has in mind are more ambitious than that.