Damn Taiwan, Full Speed Ahead

France and Germany's intent to end the EU arms embargo with China gives a pretty clear picture about how much they care about human rights. While they were reaffirming their intent, China was suppressing media coverage of the recent death of pro-Democracy leader, Zhao Ziyang. The most promising thing Mr. Jintao can boast of regarding how his government handled Ziyang's death is that the population didn't erupt into pro-democracy movements like those in 1989. Some accomplishment.

And that's just in the mainland. The EU has effectively jumped the Taiwan ship as well as compromising the security of Japan and S. Korea. Perhaps the U.S. should consider an arms embargo for European countries that engage in trading arms with China.

UPDATE: Regarding the general topic of the arms trade, this story is slightly frustrating. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, many complained that we essentially created Saddam Hussein and gave him weapons. I firmly disagree. While we have made mistakes in deciding on who to offer arms to and why, I would say on the whole that the U.S. is the model of restraint and sound judgement when compared to any other country.