KEEPING THE ARMS BAN

The European Union has decided to keep the arms ban against China, despite both Gerhard Schröder and Jaques Chirac being in favour of lifting the ban. This is a good decision. While the economy has been liberalised to a certain extent in China, the regulations on the press and the vast amounts of human rights violations still opress the Chinese people. And, perhaps more relevant to the arms ban, the Chinese government still poses a great military threat to the freer people of Taiwan.

Unfortunatly the EU doesn't seem to consider any of these things to be a big problem - at least not compared to the gains of getting a favourable treaty for any of it's companies to sell things to the expanding Chinese market. Bernad Bot, the Dutch foreign minister, told the BBC that while it wasn't the right time to lift the ban now, he hoped that things would be different next year. And quite seriously: why would they be? Are there any reasons to expect China to suddenly accept Taiwanese independence, to introduce the rule of law, and to hold relativly free elections? I think not, and if the reasons for not lifting the ban now was precisely these things, one has to wonder why it would be alright to lift the ban next year.

--