Arms exports to China. A $15 billion boom

Why France and Germany want to sell China more weapons

RUSSIA is the biggest supplier of arms to China. But, despite their arms embargoes, America and Europe have a fair slice of the business too: some 6.7% of Chinese arms imports come from America and 2.7% from Europe, according to Dieter Dettke of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. American Humvees roll off production lines in China for the People's Liberation Army. Chinese officers flit around in helicopters made by Eurocopter, part of EADS, Europe's biggest defence group. The Chinese navy has ships powered by German and French diesel-engines, and a stealth frigate, made with French technology, that looks quite like those sold to Taiwan by the defence company now called Thales. Rolls-Royce engines power the Chinese JH-&A fighter-bomber plane, says Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Centre.

There is, in short, plenty of western weaponry in China, showing that the arms embargo is far from watertight now. But the storm over the EU's desire to lift the embargo is not about helicopters and Humvees, or even jet engines. The concern is that European defence firms, mostly shut out of America's arms market, will offer China more sophisticated equipment in a market that may soon be worth $15 billion a year, about a tenth of the Pentagon's annual spending on new equipment. The Chinese are interested in French Mirage and Rafale fighters, which struggle against American competition in other export markets, and in Germany's Leopard tanks. Britain's BAE Systems, Europe's other big defence firm, has no plans to sell to China: it makes ships and planes that the Chinese can get from Russia, and it also has a big interest in not upsetting the Americans, because of its business there.

But the real cause of American anxiety, according to one expert, is the soft stuff: the expertise that allows armed forces to be integrated for today's increasingly digital warfare. This includes communications gear, hardened computer networks and night-vision cameras that can turn helicopters into 24-hour killing machines. If the embargo goes, European arms makers will be bound only by a vague code of conduct, though they promise to tighten it. The code talks of respecting human rights and not selling weapons that might be used for repression or have a “clear risk” of being wielded aggressively against another country. That hardly sounds watertight - and it will be interpreted by national governments, not at EU level.