Tiananmen Square Massacre - Aftermath
In June 1989, the United States and the members of the European Union 1embargoed the sale of military items to China to protest China’s massacre of demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The US embargo is enacted in law and barsthe sale to China of all military items—lethal and nonlethal—on the U.S.Munitions List. Canada did not impose any such embargo on China.
The EU embargo is based on a 1989 political declaration that EU members will embargo the “trade in arms” with China. Each EU member may interpret and implement the embargo’s scope for itself. It also did not specify the embargo’s scope. For example, it did not state whether the embargo covers all military articles, including weapons platforms, nonlethal military items, or components. French-licensed Chinese helicopter production, which continued into the 1990s, began prior to 1989. During the 1990s, Italy and the United Kingdom agreed to sell nonlethalmilitary items to China. Italy agreed to sell fire control radars for use on Chinese F-7M and F-7MP export fighters. The United Kingdom agreed to sell China the Searchwater airborne early warning radar system.
The days that followed June 4 rang with cries of shocked outrage from around the world, but two decades later those calls for justice and change are but a whisper, thanks in large part to China's dominant global influence. China is pushing very hard to get the E.U. to remove their arms embargo. The EU claims that the embargo is no longer effective, but ignores the obvious - why lift the embargo without replacing it with a better one? Their solution, an informal "code of conduct", allows for no comprehensive enforcement.
DoD's annual report to Congress on Chinese military power explained in 2005 in detail that U.S. officials oppose EU arms sales to China because such sales would have the potential to greatly improve China's military capabilities. "Ending the embargo could also remove implicit limits on Chinese military interaction with European militaries, giving China's armed forces broad access to critical military 'software' such modern military management practices, operational doctrine and training and logistics expertise," the report states.
It goes on to say that if the embargo were to be lifted, China would likely focus on establishing "joint ventures" with EU companies to develop technological advances. The report states that such partnerships wouldn't likely produce advances in the short term because it takes time to integrate technologies and processes. But in the medium to long term, integrations with EU companies could "significantly improve" capabilities of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. "Lifting the embargo could allow China access to military and dual-use technologies that would help China to improve current weapon systems and to improve indigenous industrial capabilities for production of future advanced weapons systems," the report states.
In 2000, Congress established the U.S.-China Security Economic Review Commission to act as the bipartisan authority on how the relationship with China affects the US economy, industrial base, and China's military and weapons proliferation. The Commission reports: "Access to more advanced systems and integrating technologies from Europe would have a much more dramatic impact on overall Chinese capabilities today than say five or ten years ago. For fourteen years China has been unable to acquire systems from the West. Analysts believe a resumption of EU arms sales to China would dramatically enhance China's military capability. 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 NATO allies."
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
