WASHINGTON
- China may have lost the latest skirmish with the
European Union to get the latter to lift its
arms ban, but Beijing is still able to buy what it needs
- solid, serviceable hardware and technology - from
Russia, former Soviet-bloc nations and Israel.
And the
embargo gives China greater incentive to develop its own
weapons systems.
On Wednesday, the European
parliament in Brussels voted, as expected, to maintain
the EU embargo on arms trade with the People's Republic
of China until the PRC improves its human rights record.
It voted not to weaken national restrictions on such
arms sales and said the ban should continue in force
until the EU itself had adopted an improved code of
conduct, providing legal restraints on arms experts. The
current ban is largely voluntary, and strongly opposed
by France and Germany.
No matter, China is still
a big arms buyer, though economic constraints if
maintained at the current level probably will keep
Beijing from doing anything extraordinary,
military-wise, for the next decade, experts say.
There is a famous incident recounted by the late
Colonel Harry Summers, author of the classic 1982 book
On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam
War. In it he notes that at the very end of the war
he was in Hanoi trying to make an agreement on the
former Republic of Vietnam. In the course of the
conversation he said, "Well, at least we never lost a
battle to you." One North Vietnamese general then
replied, "That's true, but it doesn't matter."
Much the same thing might be said concerning the
debate over lifting the arms embargo on China. While
China does not have the most modern weaponry or military
technologies, the reality is that it has most of what it
needs and is not having great difficulties in procuring
from other countries, outside the European Union and the
United States, what it does need. So the European
parliament vote is not that significant to China.
Where does China turn when it shops for military
weapons? In a word, Russia. According to the Russian
Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies
(CAST), China constitutes the largest single importer of
post-Soviet Russian arms and military equipment, with
purchases ranging between 30% and 50% of Russia's entire
annual deliveries.
Without those arms exports to
China, Russia would lack the funds to modernize its own
military. In fact, in the past Russia has prohibited the
export of certain of its military aircraft, or
production licenses, to China only to revoke the ban
later on.
Rosoboronexport, the sole state
intermediary agency for Russia's military arms sales and
exports, estimated that sales will total US$4.1 billion
this year, down from $5.1 billion in 2003. Aircraft and
ships account for over half of the exports.
China purchased eight missile systems this
summer from Russia and has already received 24 Su-30MKK
fighters. Jane's Defence Weekly reported last month that
China is in talks with Ukraine to obtain 42 turbofan
engines to power its NAMC JL-8 basic jet trainer/light
attack jet. The talks are a follow up on the 58 engines
ordered in 1997 and since delivered to Beijing.
China is also reported to have
launched preliminary talks with Ukraine on the
potential acquisition of the Antonov An-124 and An-225 Mriya
heavy-transport aircraft to address long-standing strategic
lift requirements for the People's Liberation Army. The
former is the world's largest production aircraft and
can carry a payload of at least 120 tons. The latter is
even bigger, with a payload capacity in excess of 250
tons.
In
October, the Admiralteiskiye Verfi shipyard in St Petersburg turned
over the first of two improved Kilo-class attack submarines to
China's navy, PLAN (People's Liberation Army Navy).
The two submarines were unveiled at the shipyard last
summer and are part of a Russia-China deal worth $1.5
billion that was signed in May 2002. The contract called
for five submarines. Two are being built by
Admiralteiskiye Verfi, while two others are being built
by Sevmash in Severodvinsk. The final one is being built
by Krasnoye Sormovo in Nizhni Novgorod.
The Kilo is considered
one of the most advanced diesel-electric submarines in the
world and the subs will boost China's ability to conduct
a naval blockade of Taiwan. According to a November 17
article in the Asian Wall Street Journal, by 2007
the PLAN force will have 12 Kilo-class subs. Most will be
armed with "Club" anti-ship missiles, which have a range
of 136 miles.
According to John Pike, director
of GlobalSecurity.org, a non-profit research group in
Alexandria, Virginia, "China has acquired an enormous
number of Sukhoi [fighter aircraft] variants from
Russia, as well as destroyers and subs." He thinks the
debate over an embargo is unimportant. "The EU decision
to keep the arms embargo on China is not relevant to
China insofar as Taiwan, or asserting rights in the
South China Sea, is concerned," he told Asia Times
Online.
Sometimes when China is blocked from
obtaining military systems it desires, that denial
serves as an incentive to develop the arms and
technology domestically. For example, in 2000, the US
pressured Israel to back out of a $1 billion agreement
to sell China four of its Phalcon phased-array radar
systems, which would have been used for a Chinese AWACS
(Airborne Warning and Control System). Last week the
Washington Post reported that China has developed its
own AWACS, using a domestically produced advanced radar
mounted on a Russian-made Il-76 transport aircraft, and
is test-flying the first models for early deployment in
the Taiwan Strait. The AWACS could be operational within
one or two years, assuming the tests are successful.
Israel has also been a long-standing supplier
of advanced military technologies to China. According
to the findings of a past US congressional
committee chaired by Representative Christopher
Cox (Republican-California), Israel has "offered
significant technology cooperation to the People's Republic
of China, especially in aircraft and missile
development", including helping China build its current F-10
fighter jet. The Chinese F-10 is virtually identical to
the discontinued Israeli Lavi fighter, an aircraft
designed using $1.5 billion in US aid. The Lavi program,
funded by the US and based largely on the F-16, was
intended to provide Israel with its first domestically
built fighter jet.
Israel also transferred to
China its STAR-1 cruise missile technology that
incorporates US stealth technology and is a version of
Israel's Delilah-2 missile, which contains US parts and
technology.
Perhaps the biggest constraint on
advanced Chinese military modernization is economic, not
political. According to Ted Carpenter, director of
foreign policy studies at the Washington, DC-based Cato
Institute, qualitatively, "they are still close to a
generation behind the United States. Chinese progress
will depend on how much economic resources they want to
devote to it," he told Asia Times Online. "At the
current level they would be hard put to do anything in
the next decade."
David Isenberg, a
senior analyst with the Washington-based British
American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a
wide background in arms control and national security
issues. The views expressed are his own.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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information on our sales and syndication policies.)
And the
embargo gives China greater incentive to develop its own
weapons systems. 
