Posted on 01/14/2005 8:10:44 PM PST by Brian Allen
(Filed: 15/01/2005)
Lifting the EU arms embargo on China, imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, has been on the cards for a while. European leaders considered it 13 months ago and in December, at a summit with China, declared their "political will" to remove it.
On Wednesday, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who will visit Beijing next week, said he expected that decision to be taken by the middle of the year. A sanction that China claims is a "product of the Cold War" appears in EU eyes to have outlived its usefulness.
In conjunction with their declaration on the embargo, the Europeans stressed that China must respect human rights and ensure regional stability. Yet these are both areas in which Beijing has hardly moved an inch. The peaceful, pro-democracy demonstrations in the heart of the capital 15 years ago are still described as a "counter-revolutionary rebellion". Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party chief who lost out to the hardliners in 1989, remains under house arrest. China is constantly criticising Japan for failing to accept proper responsibility for the behaviour of the militarists in the 1930s and 1940s. Yet it persists in treating Tiananmen as a taboo subject.
In a report issued yesterday, Human Rights Watch said that China had made some progress in recent years, but that it was still a "highly repressive state". Amnesty International believes that lifting the arms embargo is not justified by any improvement in the country's human rights record.
As for regional stability, the Taiwan Strait remains one of the world's flashpoints because of Beijing's outrageous claim that the island is part of China and its refusal to rule out the use of force to make that fiction reality. Indeed, the National People's Congress has upped the propaganda war against Taiwan by placing an "anti-secession law" on the agenda for its next session.
The Americans are naturally worried that European arms could be used by Beijing to invade the island, which they have pledged to defend. Such a conflict could also draw in Japan, where most American forces in East Asia are based. Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy representative, has said he expects Washington "will be able to live with" the lifting of the ban. Mr Straw claims that a revised code of conduct for arms exports will mean that the change will have little practical effect. That code, however, will be interpreted by each country individually and the Americans rightly suspect that it will enable the Chinese to acquire advanced battlefield technology not available from Russia.
Human rights and regional stability have been sacrificed to the draw of China's huge market and the desire to weaken American hegemony by creating a multipolar world. Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder have long pushed for such a decision. But for Tony Blair to follow them is to put at risk both political ties and commercial contracts with our closest ally. The Prime Minister has found himself pulled one way by Britain's special transatlantic relationship, another by Europe and the China market. He has turned in the wrong direction. US fury at EU weapons
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
Sad. Some people will do anything for a dollar (quid).
Wouldn't be the first time Britain sell out.
French and British navies have already been conducting joint exercises with the ChiComms. Maybe some other Euro-navies too.
True enough. Under the Labor Party in post WW2 Britain, a decision was made to sell and license the "Nene" jet engine to the USSR. This was what powered the MiG-15.
I am for defending Taiwan against all forms of aggression but we must pursue some form of detente with China. After all, they wil be around thousands of years from now, by virtue of their population.
<< Can [sic] I point out that most people in the world do not think of America every five minutes .... >>
Although you would be lying, you may so point.
But you aught notice that we are doing all we can to make sure everyone is.
And that the world's lesser states -- including the Euro-peon Neo-Soviet's squalidly-fasciSSocialistic off-shore satellite states -- had better remember they are either with US or are of and with our enemies.
Whose arming by any -- let alone by the gutless shower that so cravenly surrendered Once-FRee British Hong Kong's seven and a half million once-free British Hong Kong Citizens into medieval slavery and are the cowardly serial appeasers of the endemically alcoholic bank-robbing, drug-and-gun-running lying looting mass-murdering pack of gangster bastards that so grandiosely calls itself "the ira" and "shin fein" -- will not be permitted to proceed.
As you were.
The key to preventing aggression is to ensure a stable world economy( for our sake and theirs). During times of economic downturn, they turn outwards and that's where the danger lies.
Where has the US pledged to defend Taiwan? I've heard very different statements coming from the White House on that.
<< I thought that the French were already selling arms to China? Please correct me if I'm wrong. >>
True -- but the french have been sluts and devoid of any redeeming qualities for centuries. The french Micro-Turbo engine, for example, has powered generations of chinese missiles. It built Saddam's nuclear reactor and its own Exocet missile has sunk and/or severely damaged [Argentine Iran eg] many British and American Naval vessels.
Although definitively duplicitous -- and their duplicity should never be underestimated, they're right proper bastards at it -- the Brits have not overtly traditionally armed our enemies.
And had better not start.
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