The PLA at Home and Abroad - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

101. During the 1980s and 1990s, the State Council authorized
the PLA to sell arms that it already had in its inventory. To accomplish
this, the PLA’s General Staff Department’s Equipment
Department created Poly Technologies, Inc., aka the Poly Group,
in 1984 as one of its import-export arms. Poly Technologies was
responsible for selling 36 DF3-s, CSS-2s, from the PLA’s inventory
to Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s. “Poly Technologies Corporation,”
NTI, June 1998, available from www.nti.org/db/china/baoli.
htm; “China’s Missile Exports and Assistance to Saudi Arabia,”
NTI, no date, available from www.nti.org/db/china/msarpos.htm. We
were unable to find any information that indicated whether Poly
Technologies remained subordinate to the General Staff Department
or was resubordinated to the newly established General Armament
Department in 1998.
102. Harlan Jencks, “COSTIND is Dead, Long Live COSTIND!
Restructuring China’s Defense Scientific, Technical, and Industrial
Sector,” in James C. Mulvenon and Richard H. Yang, eds., The
People’s Liberation Army in the Information Age, Santa Monica, CA:
RAND Corporation, 1999, pp. 59-77.
103. In 1998, then CMC Chairman Jiang Zemin ordered the
PLA to divest itself of many business ventures, because of their
negative effect on the PLA’s focus on preparing for combat. Jencks,
pp. 59-77.
104. This information came from correspondence with Dr.
Paul Hotom, who is an Arms Transfers Programme Leader at SI-
PRI. The specific information on the arms transfers for 1999-2008
can be found at SIPRI’s Arms Transfers Database, available from
armstrade.sipri.org/.
105. Russell Hsiao, “Chinese Soldiers and Arms Exports
Embroiled in Zimbabwe’s Electoral Impasse,” China Brief, Vol.
8, Issue 9, August 5, 2008, available from www.jamestown.org/
single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5 Btt_news%5D=4883.
106. “Sino-Bangladesh Ties,” Central Chronicle, September 22,
2007, available from www.centralchronicle.com/20070922/2209302.
htm. The article did not specify whether a state-owned conglomerate
or the PLA was the arms seller.
472