Pacific Rim Bureau – In a decision that Washington is sure to welcome, the European Union has decided against lifting an embargo on weapons sales to China – for now.
The matter was discussed by the EU’s 25 foreign ministers at a meeting in Luxembourg, just days after French President Jacques Chirac, visiting Beijing, said the ban was unjustified.
The European Union (EU) imposed the embargo in response to China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.
Concerns about any attempt to lift the 15-year-old ban have been raised by Taiwan, which says an injection of sophisticated European weaponry will affect the military balance across the Taiwan Strait and make war more likely.
The U.S. government, which is committed by law to help Taiwan to defend itself, has been lobbying European allies for the arms ban to remain in place.
Despite the decision, however, there were signs that the embargo may be lifted in the future, especially if an effective EU arms-control regime – stipulating what type of weapons the EU should be able to sell to any countries – is put in place first.
An EU code of conduct recommending criteria for granting licenses for arms export was adopted in 1998, but it is not legally binding.
Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, who chaired the meeting, told a press conference afterwards that while more time was needed to review the situation, “we hope to be able to indicate a positive orientation toward the lifting.”
The foreign ministers also said in a document that “a positive trend” could be seen in China, “with improvements in the rule of law and respect for economic rights.”
Nonetheless, reports from Luxembourg say opposition to lifting the embargo came primarily from Britain and Scandinavian countries, which remain unhappy with Beijing’s human rights record, and from some of the new, pro-U.S. EU members from eastern Europe – especially Poland and the Czech Republic.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that any lifting of the embargo “has got to be done in a proper and sensible way and that is the process which has been agreed by the whole of the European Union.”
China has the third-largest defense budget in the world, after the U.S. and Russia – between $50 and $70 billion. Alert to the commercial possibilities, France has been spearheading the move to lift the arms ban.
Human rights activists outraged
During his visit to China – accompanied by more than 50 top French business executives, some of whom scored lucrative orders – Chirac said “most EU countries” were in favor of rescinding the embargo, a move he hoped would happen “in the coming months.”
The French leader also said the ban was the product of “another time” – a remark that prompted outrage from human rights campaigners.
“President Chirac’s remarks conveniently ignore China’s obligations under international human rights law,” said the Human Rights in China group.
“The bloody suppression of unarmed civilians cannot be considered a matter of ‘another time’ after 15 short years,” the group said.
At home, Chirac was also criticized by a lawmaker in his ruling UMP party, Alain Madelin, who told a radio station: “China needs human rights, freedom. It doesn’t need our weapons.”
Unknown hundreds of people died when the Chinese army was sent in on June 3-4, 1989 to crush demonstrations by tens of thousands of students and workers calling for democratic reforms.
Beijing’s unchanged official verdict of the events was that the authorities had suppressed a counter-revolutionary riot.
President Hu Jintao recently refused to apologize for the massacre, saying China’s subsequent political stability showed that it had been the correct course of action to take.
Some campaigners charge that France is not only prepared to turn a blind eye to Chinese violations of human rights, but may even be colluding.
The press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement last week that a French arms manufacturer, part-owned by the government, had sold Beijing antennae which are being used to jam or scramble foreign short-wave radio programs including the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, the BBC World Service and the Voice of Tibet.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a congressional body that reviews the national security implications of trade and economic ties between the U.S. and China, has called for the embargo to remain in place.
“If the EU arms embargo against China is lifted, the U.S. military could be placed in a situation where it is defending itself against arms sold to the PLA by North American Treaty Organization (NATO) allies,” the commission said in its annual report to Congress, last June.
“If European firms are permitted to sell arms to China, it should certainly impact decisions on any cooperative ventures between U.S. and European defense firms,” it recommended.
The commission urged administration officials to put pressure on EU governments to keep the ban in place.
