EU Weapons Embargo and Current Chinese Foreign Policy

This article examines the EU weapons embargo on China as a major foreign policy challenge that China’s new leadership has inherited. The article argues that the continuation of the embargo constitutes a failure of Chinese foreign policy to project China as a responsible global player. The article examines the legal framework and the political debate within the EU to emphasise that the embargo has been largely ineffective in its objective of denying advanced military technology to China. The continuation of the ban, however, suggests that China, while becoming an economic and military power, is finding it difficult to overcome the significant political resistance to it being accepted as a responsible global actor.