KWIC news Toronto October 15£º China has now started to further exert its political and economic impacts on North Korea, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia etc.. China has lately provided North Korea with 80,000 tons of petroleum in aid and has copied Moscow in establishing its political and economic impacts on the west Asian countries by means of providing military assistance. The Western military observers in Beijing generally agree that the visit made by the Saudi Arabian Prince Abdula, also the commander of the Saudi National Guards, to China on October 13 merits attention. Prince Halid Sultan visited China in 1988. Soon after that, China exported to Saudi Arabia the DF3 medium-range ballistic missiles and the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Taiwan was thus ended. In 1997, China also exported to Kuwait the 155mm-calibre self-propelled guns.

According to the satellite-transmitted CCTV news of October 14 which was received and recorded by KWIC in Toronto, Cao Gangchuan, the Director of the General Military Equipment Department of the Chinese army, participated in the meeting between the prime minister Zhu Rongji and the Prince Abdula. The news indicated that subsequently, meetings would be held between the representatives of the similar organizations of these two countries.

On the international weapon market, the DF3 is now the missile with the longest launch range ever exported. The DF3 that China's 2nd Artillery (the Strategic Rocket Army) is equipped with has a 2200-kilogram warhead and can be launched as far as 3000 kilometers away. It is said that the same missiles exported to Saudi Arabia have the conventional warheads and a shortened launch range of around 1800 kilometers. After Saudi Arabia had the DF3 missiles, the whole middle east area, including Israel, is within the range of the missiles.

It seems that China once took its export of the "powerful massive destruction weapons" as a "political game" so as to improve its status as a "power" to bargain with the USA and thus to restrict the US weapon sales to Taiwan.

As KWIC estimates, the visit of the highest ranking official of the Saudi armed forces to China has a direct bearing on Saudi Arabia's wish to upgrade its current DF3 ground-to-ground tactical campaign missiles. The DF3 missiles have been used in Saudi Arabia for over 10 years. If technically upgraded and equipped with the GPS guiding system, the DF3 will greatly increase its combat precision (Andrei Pinkov).

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