Yeah. We Europeans should stick to the totalitarian non-communist states like America does.

(I thought these ideas died with McCarthy. Come back education, all is forgiven.)

Apart from that, there is another sobering thought.
During the first war on Iraq under the first Bush I came to the conclusion that weapons sold abroad absolutely have to be useless against the country that made them. Inevitable weaknesses in the arms systems are secretly being enhanced, preferrably in a way that will make fighting these systems almost funny. We had that kind of reports, didn*t we?
Do I have any evidence of this? Of course not, who would buy any Russian, French or US-weapons with this evidence.
Does it make perfect sense?
Absolutely.
You agree with me if you give it a second thought.

The situation with Taiwan has been there for 50 or so years and nobody has done much about it so far. If anybody was really intent on starting WW3 to force an unwilling Taiwanese people back into China-proper, I don’t think that they’d be playing around making laws. After all, who are they trying to justify themselves to?

Historically, the Chinese are a very patient people. Wait another 50 or so years and Taiwan could be begging China to take it back.

I think that its a mistake to assume that actions when taken by China indicate the same as they would when taken by the US.

Michael - I think that fundamentally misses the point about Chinese attitudes to Taiwan. They are of course interested in growing rich together. But to them Taiwan is part of China. If the Californians declared themselves independent, could you see Washington saying “oh well, we both benefit from the trade between ourselves, so let’s just leave things as they are…”? Absolutely not. The US fought a civil war over that, and ultimately China will not tolerate Taiwan inching towards independence. That is what the new anti-secession law is all about.

I am not a military technologist, but this sounds a little hypocritical:
China has made it plain that it believes it should be the military power in the region. The US cannot do anything about this without creating the problems it seeks to avoid
China already has intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. (Whether they will hit what they’re pointed at is another question, but with nukes who cares.) They also have a successful manned space program. Originally, these programs came from Russia (the US’s ally in space) however, increasingly they are home-grown or rather home-improved by extremely bright Chinese technicians trained at American Universities. Half a million foreign students pay the US handsomely for their education and the largest single group are the Chinese (China, Hong Kong & Taiwan) It is hard to imagine a more potent potential weapons technology
The primary reason China is currently seeking to upgrade its military is in response to increased firepower in the region under the control of the US and its allies there. Recently, the US has increased its destruction potential from more- than- the- rest- of- the- world- put- together to mttrotwpt + 30%
one of the constant moans coming out of Washington is that other nations are not doing enough to defend themselves and relying too heavily on the US
Of course, none of this really counts if China really is a threat to the region so one sobering thought: in an attemt to modernise, China recently raised its military budget to $20B ($15 per capita), the US’s military budget is $400B ($1,500 per capita, 10,000% more).

So what about Taiwan? My feeling is that China’s new law has more to do with the US saying “Don’t you dare…” If China & Taiwan continue to grow rich together, and China doesn’t feel threatened, why should it foul the nest.

Additionally, the primary risks in the world’s security today are decidedly low-tech and ideological. China is already one of the world’s largest manufacturers of low-tech weapons and not renowned for trying to export its ideology.

Of course, any arms purchased are considered to be desirable, one would presume.

And one most often sells by convincing the buyer of the quality of an item.

But it still is likely true that selling certain advaanced technologies is what most concerns the US or EU countries who have such technologies (the main arms sellers).

Give him the weapons he needs, and he’ll find it more difficult to go the step further to those weapons he desires but doesn’t need.

So while the US may be hypocritical on this, it certainly doesn’t excuse the EU lifting the ban right now, in the wake of the Taiwan sabre-rattling (or even at all).