A Study On The Issue Of EU's Arms Ban Against China

An arms ban is a prescript imposed by one or more States to forbid arms sales from its internal to other countries. It is an idiographic embodiment of arms embargo. Western countries" arms embargo against PRC is a long standing issue, and soon after the "Tiananmen Incident" in 1989 the European Community issued an official statement, announced the ban on arms sales to China. The ban does not have a legal efficacy and rigid enforcement, its political significance is bigger than in practice.China-EU relations began to recovery and develop rapidly as early as 1970th, the bilateral relations expanded from economic sphere to political, cultural and other fields. At present, the two sides have established a comprehensive strategic partnership. However, the arms embargo is an obstacle between China-EU's further cooperation. China thinks that the ban has been outdated compare to the good bilateral relations and it should be lifted, but EU still has many reasons to maintain it.This article analyses the factors which impact EU in lifting its arms ban through three levels: the national, regional and international level. These factors including the different attitudes among EU member states and organizations, a restriction of EU"s operating mechanism and the pressure from the United States. EU' antinomy on this issue is the conflict between its values and reality interests. The crux of this problem is concentrate on the different understanding of human rights. On the one hand, China should know the EU's "limited strategic actor nature" and make up the "realities-expectations gap" on its understanding of EU; On the other hand, the two sides should strengthen dialogues on such sensitive issues as human rights to narrow the gap between concepts and make EU to lift the ban earlier.