DESPITE serious concerns about regional security voiced by the US against Europeans plan to lift the arms embargo against China, it looked up until last week as though the Europeans were more interested in good trade relations with the Asian giant, than Asia’s security concerns. The arms embargo was expected to be lifted soon. Last minute pleas from Secretary of State Rice seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.
Then China passed its "anti-secession law" which threatens military action against Taiwan if Taiwan pursues its goal of independence from the mainland.
Apparently the Chinese officials who framed the law assumed there might be some bad feedback from the US, which is committed to support Taiwan if military force is used against it, but did not think this was a European concern. Trade deals with Europe and Taiwan efforts at independence, according to a Beijing government spokesman, had no connection.
But, that assumption proved incorrect. Europe as well as the US is sensitive to Taiwan/China policy. And the plans to lift the arms embargo, which was imposed after China’s crackdown on student protests at Tianammen Square in 1989, have now been indefinitely postponed.
The European decision came apparently as a surprise. Their anti-secession law, China maintains, is simply aimed at maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait.
But European diplomats, interviewed by the press and on television freely admitted that the combination of China’s new anti-secession law coupled with intense American opposition to lifting the trade embargo which would ease weapon sales to China, were crucial factors in delaying the plans to lift the embargo.
To the outside world, the anti-secession law seemed illtimed for a number of reasons. Not just the influence it might have on European’s plans to lift the arms embargo, but also because the relations between China and Taiwan had appeared to be improving rather than deteriorating, over the past few months.
China’s official position enunciated by its foreign minister is that it wants the arms embargo removed because it amounted to political discrimination. And this has nothing to do with the anti-secession law.
When pressed about a time when the postponed lifting of the arms embargo might take place. EU spokesmen suggested it could be delayed until next year.
Several Chinese "experts" who did not care to be identified by the press seemed to agree the timing was wrong. If the Chinese legislature had simply discussed the possibility of a new law, rather than enacted one, the damage might have been averted.
