Chinese ICBM test a 1-2 punch

China was reported Wednesday to have fired an intercontinental rocket into the Pacific Ocean for the second time in a week. The government later announced it had "concluded its tests of launching carrier rockets." Australian warships observed the rocket before it splashed down about 750 miles north-northwest of Fiji.

The tests, which began Sunday, showed that China had gained the capability of firing rockets into Europe and the continental United States and Soviet bloc.

Meanwhile, a Chinese military group headed by Gen. Liu Huaqing, deputy chief of the Chinese General Staff, toured US defense industries for two weeks, Monitor correspondent John Cooley reports. General Liu's trip preceded a 10-day visit due to begin Sunday by Chinese Vice-Premier Keng Biao. The US has agreed to sell China nonlethal defense supplies such as radar gear and trucks.

The US Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Lew Allen Jr., told a national-security forum at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., May 21, "We recognize that China -- implacably opposed to Soviet hegemony -- serves as a strategic counterweight to the USSR and a potentially stabilizing influence in the broad arc from Southeast to Northeast Asia."