From that paragon of journalistic integrity, the Washington Times
New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.
U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.
OK "New Intelligence", "US Officials with Access", that's two unsourced claims. Lets see how we add up when we look at the complete article.
'According to the officials'
'U.S. Army specialists suspect'
'"Americans are being killed by Chinese-supplied weapons, with the full knowledge and understanding of Beijing where these weapons are going," one official said.'
'Apologists for China within the government said the intelligence reports were not concrete proof of Chinese and Iranian government complicity.
'Pentagon spokesmen declined to comment.'
'A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy did not return telephone calls seeking comment.'
That's no less then 8 anonymous sources in one article.
And the phrase "Apologists for China" ? Bloody hell, people who try to calm down tensions between China and the United States are now called Apologists ? They probably shouldn't have used that word if they were trying for a balanced article, but by now it's pretty obvious that proper journalism was not the driving force behind this article.
But don't worry, someone did bother to put their name to it.
'John Tkacik, a former State Department official now with the Heritage Foundation...",
'Mr. Tkacik said the administration should be candid with the American people about China's arms shipments, including Beijing's provision of man-portable air-defense missiles through Iran and Syria to warring factions in Lebanon and Gaza.'
Hey look, we have an actual name now. Do a google search on 'John Tkacik' and China, and you get a mere 22,000 articles. A quick read shows that someone is bringing a lot of baggage to the table.
One last thing. Another quote in that article is this :
'China began supplying Iran over the past several years with small, high-speed C-14 catamarans armed with the optically guided FL-10 anti-ship cruise missiles.'
This almost sounds like they have been buying them recently. According to Global Security
In July 2002 a conventional-arms sale triggered sanctions on several Chinese companies. Beijing had transfered high-speed catamaran missile patrol boats to Iran. The C-14 patrol boats are outfitted with anti-ship cruise missiles. Short-range anti-ship missiles for the patrol boats also were sold from China to Iran in January 2002. The catamaran and anti-ship missile sales were first disclosed by The Washington Times in May 2002, shortly after the first of the new C-14 patrol boats was observed by US military intelligence at an Iranian port.
Oh, look who the source of information was for that article also...