China under The Wassenaar Arrangement Restriction. Options

[antimatter]

the real teeth against china are the US arms embargo and EU arms embargo. these are specifically controlling exports to china citing the tiananmen incident. Wassenaar has nothing to do with those.

To me, this is the real deal, dual usage restriction has hampered China's commercial development which far more fundamental across the board in one country advancement than its arms embargo.

Because if China 's commercial advancement to certain degree, its arms development would advance naturally as a byproduct .

This post has been edited by antimatter: Jun 20 2009, 06:26 PM

[clusterweapon]

Don't get me wrong. Wassenaar is not really new and it's not some sort of secret NWO conspiracy. In fact, there are questions about its effectiveness. You can read more about it here:

http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol06/62/lipson62.pdf

My disagreement is with your contention that it's a strictly "feel good" treaty. Rather, I think it's a forum between the nations in question for organizing their technology transfer restrictions. The end goal, ultimately, is multi-lateral control of military/dual-use technology exports, particularly to states that are considered "pariahs"; how you interpret that depends on how cynical you are. To me, the membership list of a treaty says a lot about the different "camps" in the world. To this end, it might be interesting to note that according to the above cited article, when the treaty was originally founded in the 1990s, the Japanese hoped that China might become a founding member, but the US had no such expectations, and have not included China formally in the discussions.

That was good paper you found. Basically Lipson concludes Wassenaar is more about constructing norms and "socializing behavior". But one has to wonder why the norms exist as they do. Yes I do see some attempt to define "pariahs" and keeping them weak.

It was in China's interest to upset this kind of control regime since the Europeans dominated 3rd world economies. Strong local governments were needed to open competition to the Chinese. On the other hand you do see Chinese give in on some arms control issues like missile exports. I think some of that change came about when China became an oil importers, and wished to stablize prices. The more Iran was threatening Persian Gulf shipping, the more Chinese were paying for oil.

Violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty



So?



I was actually thinking of Russia.

no doubt the hypocrisy is immense everywhere you look at these people.
I doubt Russia looks better by telling China, hey it's not my fault, Wassenaar thinks you're a rogue. They'd appear more friendly just by saying the tech isn't mature or something.

[antimatter]

It's mostly a "we have the technology and you don't" club, and is so by design -

Who's we? When's the last time Russia and US are together?
What's criteria to join the club? Not by wealth standard, Not by ideology standard according to the list.

[clusterweapon]

To me, this is the real deal, dual usage restriction has hampered China's commercial development which far more fundamental across the board in one country advancement than its arms embargo.

Because if China 's commercial advancement to certain degree, its arms development would advance naturally as a byproduct .

dual use restriction is part of the arms embargo. it's not due to wassenaar.

put it this way, wassenaar wants china to be in it. china doesn't want wassenaar.

[antimatter]

put it this way, wassenaar wants china to be in it. china doesn't want wassenaar.

I don't think so. CHina wants to buy hightech comercial equipments from US but many of them are restricted under this.
China often said the trade deficit with the west can reduce if the export restriction are to be relaxed.
So, How does that equates to China doesn't want to join?

[clusterweapon]

^they are restricted under the US embargo according to US law, which was put into place in 1990 before Wassenaar ever existed!

[antimatter]

^they are restricted under the US embargo according to US law, which was put into place in 1990 before Wassenaar ever existed!

well, isn't about time for China to bring about the review of such issue, given it's economic clout status and importance to the stability of the world and IMF contributions.

1)Whether arms control should be applied to China
2)Whether dual usage eshould be linked to arms control. The dual usage restriction has affected the economic side.




Still the questions remains why aren't more asian, arab and latin countries being admitted to the club?? Many of them are not under official embargo by the west. That's the main porblem I am having with such organization.

This post has been edited by antimatter: Jun 20 2009, 07:37 PM

[clusterweapon]

USA will not sell arms to China any more than China will sell to Japan, whether there is embargo or not. However there are some dual use technologies like engines, electronics and software which can be helpful to China.

As for Wassenaar, most countries just can't be bothered to apply. Anyway all the major arms suppliers except China are already on the list. Wassenaar is not a tech sharing organization, they are a collective commitment to NOT SHARE.

[Eidolon]

Wassenaar is not a tech sharing organization, they are a collective commitment to NOT SHARE.

Pretty much sums it up. Antimatter is right to the extent that China might be pissed about treaties like Wassenaar, which organize multi-lateral efforts to not share technology; however, being a part of Wassenaar would not necessarily make other countries share with China - it would just make China a part of the "no sharing" club. This is something that I wasn't quite clear about in my first posts on this thread, where I think I gave the impression that the club of US-led high-tech countries, which do share some technologies with each other, is the same as the club of Wassenaar signatories. This isn't quite true - while there is significant overlap, the two does not seem to be equivalent.

And really, China shouldn't be pissed - not sharing is just the reality of the world. Like someone said above, the US doesn't even share many of its top technologies with its allies, much less its rivals and enemies. If China wants cutting edge technology, it should learn to develop it itself.

This post has been edited by Eidolon: Jun 20 2009, 09:06 PM

[sinraptor]

meh sounds like one of those organizations that the Americans create every now and then in a vain atempt to make China feel excluded and in order for China to join, China had to make concessions. Thats what they did to Russia, in order for them to join the international space station, they had to scrap MIR. I say joining such groups is too much of a price to pay such as national pride