Lending an Ear

As if the arms-sale offer to Peking were not enough to rile the Kremlin, American officials last week admitted that for the past year the U.S. and China have run an electronic listening post in the Tian Shan mountains of western China's Xinjiang province. The station monitors missile tests conducted at Soviet bases in Leninsk and Sary-Shagan, in Kazakhstan. Though U.S. technicians installed the equipment and trained the Chinese to run the station, they now visit the site only occasionally to check on maintenance—and, presumably, pick up data.