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Exporting unrest: PRC arms sales don’t match rhetoric

FORUM Staff

Chinese entities continue to export destabilizing weapons and contribute to the missile programs of dangerous regimes despite a December 2021 United Nations resolution condemning such activities.

In addition to supporting existing arms embargoes, the recent U.N. Security Council resolution references the body’s grave concern that the “illicit transfer, destabilizing accumulation and misuse of small arms and light weapons in many regions of the world” continue to threaten international security.

Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is exporting weapons that emphasize the rate of fire over accuracy and is allowing its companies to send dangerous technologies to regimes that are banned from receiving them, according to published reports.

Chinese companies are exporting lethal mortar systems to battlefields across the globe, according to a January 5, 2022, article in The National Interest magazine. The PRC modernized the Russian-made Vasilek automatic mortar system to make it more powerful. “Now there are more Chinese clones of the Vasilek than the original Soviet production run,” the article stated.

To the contrary, the United States is focused on precision weaponry that limits noncombatant casualties. The U.S. Department of Defense defines a precision-guided munition as a “guided weapon intended to destroy a point target and minimize collateral damage.” These weapons include air- and ship-launched missiles, multiple launched rockets and bombs.

The lethal mortars being exported by the PRC provide additional range and firepower and can be mounted on vehicles. “Given the proliferation of modern Chinese weapons across the battlefields of the world, both new and old automatic mortars are a unique adversarial threat across the globe,” the National Interest article stated.

In Syria’s ongoing civil war, the modernized Vasilek has been used by the Syrian Armed Forces, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units and the Islamist group Ansar al-Sham, according to the intelligence consultancy Armament Research Services.

The U.S., meanwhile, seeks to limit arms exports to dangerous regimes. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in December 2021 condemned the Myanmar military’s killing of dozens of civilians on Christmas Eve, calling for an end to arms sales to the junta, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported. Myanmar is one of the biggest recipients of Chinese arms in the Indo-Pacific, and its military said in December 2021 that it had received a diesel-electric attack submarine from the PRC, the Defense News website reported.

The U.S. also issued an arms embargo against Cambodia in December 2021, citing deepening Chinese influences as well as public corruption and human rights abuses by the government and the military, The Associated Press reported.

The PRC also has allowed missile technology exports to unstable regimes. Even though the Chinese government stopped the direct transfer of missile technology to regimes sanctioned by the U.N., Chinese-controlled entities continued to supply Iran, North Korea and Syria, according to a May 2021 report from the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

The weapons transfers are subject to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which is an agreement among 35 member states to limit the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. “Chinese entities continued to supply MTCR-controlled goods to missile programs of proliferation concern in 2020,” the research service’s report stated.

The PRC also helped Pyongyang fund its weapons programs by defying U.N. sanctions on North Korean coal and oil exports. A U.N. panel said in April 2020 that China’s shipping industry transferred North Korean coal and oil onto Chinese barges, The Guardian newspaper reported.

Despite this record of proliferation, PRC officials unashamedly lambasted the U.S. before the U.N. in late 2021, accusing it of not living up to its international commitments and of undermining attempts to combat global challenges.

Notably, the PRC is selling weapons to regimes near the U.S. mainland. Chinese weapons transfers to Venezuela kicked off in 2006 when the U.S. placed an arms embargo on the South American nation for failing to cooperate with anti-terrorism efforts, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The transactions include 18 K-8 trainer jets in 2010, 121 VN-4 armored vehicles in 2012 and an undisclosed number of C-802 anti-ship missiles in 2017. In May 2019, the Venezuelan National Guard deployed eight VN-4s against anti-government protesters, CSIS reported.

While arming the repressive government of Nicolas Maduro, Chinese authorities simultaneously are providing it with a digital form of authoritarianism to monitor citizens’ internet activities, a former advisor to the Venezuelan government said. “Whoever believes that privacy exists in Venezuela through email communications, Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram is wrong,” Anthony Daquin, former advisor on computer security to the Ministry of Justice in Venezuela, told the advocacy group Freedom House. All those tools are subject to government intervention, he said.

The PRC provides technical assistance for the Maduro regime to monitor those it deems enemies of the state. “They have television camera systems, fingerprints, facial recognition, word algorithm systems for the internet and conversations,” Daquin said.

IMAGE CREDIT: ISTOCK

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