China seeks 'open door' to European weapons sales
UNITED NATIONS — Though China has become a virtual factory to the world for so very many consumer export items, there’s still a wide range of high-tech imports which the People’s Republic avidly wishes to purchase. Well beyond the obvious ledger lists of commercial aircraft and computers which have become a mainstay, weapons deals remain a key focus for Beijing.
Now the European Union has edged closer to lifting the weapons ban on sales to Mainland China which dates to the communist crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in June 1989.
In 2002 EU countries granted arms export licenses for $300 million in weapons to the People’s Republic of China —half the sales came from France. As London’s Financial Times reports, “President Jacques Chirac has championed lifting the ban—imposed in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square massacre, which the EU believes implies a near pariah-status China no longer deserves.” Still the EU wants to link lifting the ban with more transparency on the arms sales to China, “But Paris is resisting more openness.”
Such lack of transparency, as a point of comparison, remains a key failing in the UN’s ill-fated Oil for Food Program in Iraq too, where those non-military contracts nonetheless operated in a climate of secrecy which in turn often fueled a culture of corruption.
The arms embargo rests more on political suasion than with a formal set of legal sanctions. EU states wish to link any revision with not only transparency but also concessions by the People’s Republic of China such as Beijing’s ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Though France and Germany have pressed to lift the ban, most other EU states also want a human rights gesture from China, if only to hold a convenient political fig leaf through which to rationalize the lucrative military sales.
The Financial Times states editorially, “It is true Beijing does not deserve to be cast into the same pariah category as Burma, Sudan or Zimbabwe, to which the EU also bans weapons sales. But in the Chinese case there is a wider geopolitical position…towards Taiwan it remains a creator, not a calmer of tension. Indeed it has responded to recent nationalist political developments in Taipei with overt military menaces.” The paper adds poignantly, “It is scarcely surprising that the U.S. which underwrites Taiwan’s security, objects strongly to the prospect of Europe arming China.”
And very rightly so given the PRC’s crude threats to Taiwan’s democracy. Depending of the outcome of Legislative elections throughout Taiwan this weekend, Beijing could yet again revert to saber rattling.
Stated another way, Washington does not wish to potentially confront any future threat from a People’s Republic of China armed with higher technology West European weapons as compared with the current inventory of Russian arms which Beijing buys.
Naturally the EU’s growing trade and investment ties with China have promoted a commercial dynamic of their own. Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder just finished a visit to China, his fifth since 1999, which unambiguously stressed the business bottom line. Volkswagen opened a Mainland China production facility and Daimler Chrysler has expanded its operations. Only recently the French electronic giant Thomson decided to produce a big share of its TV sets in China after long resisting the move.
Two way EU/PRC trade in 2003 reached $134 billion with a $24 billion surplus for Beijing.
A recently concluded EU/PRC economic summit in The Hague saw no breakthrough on lifting the voluntary arms embargo. Still as trade relations continue to grow, Beijing has less than subtly raised the issue that future commercial relations hinge not just on Airbus sales but on what the Chinese like to present as a “normalization of overall political relations.”
Indeed the Europeans increasingly view China more as an opportunity than a strategic threat. And Beijing’s Marxist Mandarins are happy to cultivate commerce — but equally wish to pry open the door to Europe’s high-tech weapons. Happily the EU did not cave in and lift the arms embargo.
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense
issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.  |
