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China needs to prove
itself a worthy friend
The EU and China
Don't lift the arms ban
Sep 30th 2004
OONCE a rebel and proud of it, these days China counts
itself among the world's great powers and craves the
respect it feels such status should bring. The
European Union, equally keen to be accepted as an
emerging power to be reckoned with, sees China as a
potential “strategic partner”. Before too long, on
current trends, each may well become the other's
largest trading partner. As China takes on more of a
role in world affairs, from trade and finance to
diplomacy and peacekeeping, the two have much business
to do. But for China there is a stain on this
new-found friendship that it wants removed: the EU's
15-year-old ban on arms sales to China.
At high-level meetings with Europeans, such as next
week's ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) summit in Vietnam,
and the annual EU-China summit later in the year, it
will lobby strenuously, over equally strenuous
objections coming from America, for the embargo
finally to be lifted. And 15 years on, why not? The
trouble is that, by setting aside the ban to please
its new friend, Europe could end up shooting itself in
the foot.
Dropping the ban enjoys some support in Europe.
Imposed after the 1989 massacre in Beijing's Tiananmen
Square, it is now an anachronism, argues France.
Germany, Spain and Italy, among others, would probably
agree. The world has moved on; today's China is a
modern, more stable place. Why bracket it with Myanmar,
Sudan and Zimbabwe, three other miscreant regimes
singled out for similar opprobrium? Anyway, lifting
the ban on China would be little more than a symbolic
gesture since, unlike the Russians, the Europeans
won't be lining up to sell state-of-the-art fighter
aircraft, bombers, submarines and warships—the EU's
code of conduct on arms sales will see to that.
Yet keeping the ban would be a symbol of a different
kind. Although much time has indeed passed since
Tiananmen, some who survived the bloodshed to be
locked up in 1989 are still behind bars. China's poor
human-rights record has improved a bit, yet people are
still put in jail for their political or religious
beliefs, and the government has yet to ratify the UN's
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. None of this
has stopped China joining the WTO, or prevents it
trading with all and sundry, including America. But
that makes the symbolism of the EU's arms ban, like
America's, that much more important: a reminder that
the outside world still cares.
China's choice
Keeping the ban, which covers defence technology as
well as weapons, has strategic as well as political
value. China's arms build-up in recent years has been
aimed chiefly at intimidating Taiwan, which it claims
is a renegade province that it will eventually recover,
by force if need be. Some Europeans think this is no
concern of theirs; anyway it is America, not Europe,
that is pledged to help Taiwan should China's threats
turn into aggression. But that is dangerously
short-sighted. Europe's considerable interests in Asia
would suffer badly in the event of any dust-up between
the region's largest and fourth-largest economies. And
if America were then to find itself facing off over
Taiwan with a China equipped in part by its own NATO
allies, the transatlantic alliance itself could become
another among the casualties.
Might the EU's code of conduct help guard against such
a self-defeating outcome? It calls for licences to be
denied where equipment might be used to abuse human
rights, press territorial claims by force, or harm the
interests of friends or allies. But the code is not
binding; governments can interpret it as they see fit,
and some are clearly keen to start selling again. EU
experts have been working on ways to tighten the code,
making it easier to find out who proposes to sell what—and
not just to China. But no one doubts that, with the
ban lifted, more militarily useful things would get
through. China would be just as pleased with western
communications, radar and other technologies as with
more obviously offensive weapons.
This does not mean that the ban can never be lifted.
But Europeans should first expect a sustained
improvement in China's human-rights record and, above
all, a recognition that, whatever its differences with
Taiwan, these must be settled peacefully. Instead of
wringing its hands over whether to lift its ban, the
EU should be pointing out to China that there are
limits to friendship that only China itself can
remove.
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