First, the good news: Beijing is not building a microwave weapon to zap you into submission. Now, the bad: the Chinese are kind of interested in using electromagnetic radiation to fry your computers. Especially if you happen to live in Taiwan.

Those are the conclusions for a pair of secret reports, recently declassified and unearthed by the National Security Archive.

For years, a determined caucus of doomsayers in the U.S. have done their best to raise the alarm about the dangers of a king-sized electromagnetic pulse (EMP) wiping out American electronics. The result: a return, if not quite to the Stone Age, then to the Mad Men Era.

This group may be relieved to learn that there’s no RF weapons locker in Beijing — at least, there wasn’t in 2001 or 2005, when these reports were written. “China is not believed to have deployed any RF weapons at this time,” reads the earlier paper, from the National Ground Intelligence Center.

But the EMP posse will find reasons in the reports to stay together. The Chinese are “developing high power radio frequency devices that could form the basis for some types of RF weapons.” the 2001 study says. And Beijing is at least considering an EMP “weapon against Taiwan’s electronic infrastructure,” the 2005 paper notes.

Plus, if they don’t zap their neighbors, the Chinese might just shoot their energy weapons into space.

“The most likely configuration is a system consisting of one or more large antennas that would beam HPM [high power microwave] pulses from the earth’s surface toward a satellite in an attempt to negate on-board sensors,” according to the 2001 report. “Other possibilities are a RF missile warhead launched on a direct-ascent trajectory and an RF satellite carrying an HPM transmitter that would be placed in orbit and then upon command would maneuver into the vicinity of a target satellite.”

The U.S. already spent gobs to money on an arsenal of radio frequency and electromagnetic weapons — from pain rays to circuit-frying “e-bombs” to jammers that shut communications down. So maybe it’s no surprise that Chinese have been looking into the idea of building some RF arms of their own.

By 2005, the second study reports, Chinese researchers were conducting HPM and electromagnetic pulse experiments on living things. “Animals studied include mice, rats, rabbits, dogs, and monkeys. Dose-related effects on eyes, brain, heart, bone marrow, reproductive and other vital organs were reported. The researchers’ interest in potential human effects in apparent,” the report notes.

Unlike their counterparts in America — who built the agony-inducing, microwave-esque Active Denial System — these Chinese researchers weren’t interested in “pursing [an] antipersonnel RF weapon system,” however.

Instead, “sources with these frequency and pulse characteristics would make much more effective weapons against unshielded electronic targets (whose sensitivity to these radiations is much greater than that of the human body).” So: we humans get a reprieve. But our gadgets could still get it.