Welcome to China, Mr Ahern - just don't mention human rights

IT'S just as well that Dubya's attention was focused on blowing up balloons for his inauguration party yesterday, or he might have noticed that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was trying to slip a fast one by him.

Better to be blowing up balloons than blowing up anything else, I suppose, but Bertie Ahern upset his friends in the great US of A this week by suggesting that the European Union was about to lift the current arms embargo on China.

Leading a trade delegation there at the moment, he probably thought the Yanks would be yee-hawing too much in Washington to notice what he was up to in the land of the dragon. Plus such an announcement would go down well with the Chinese and it wouldn't do any harm to the prospect of Irish firms signing a few contracts.

The problem is, the EU and the US arms embargo was imposed after the massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Untold hundreds were slaughtered and the full extent of the massacre has never been established. The Chinese leadership had ordered the military to fire on civilians who were trying to prevent soldiers from entering the square and reaching the protestors. Nothing much seems to have changed there.

The US has warned that it would be a "significant" obstacle to US defence co-operation with EU member states should they support the French effort to lift the embargo, which President Jacques Chirac is actively promoting. Ireland was one of the EU states to back the American stance. Or at least we did up to this week.

The Taoiseach may have forgotten this little item, in the same way as he forgot promises made at the last general election, and the one he made to the UN about foreign aid targets. Not that the Yanks should lecture anybody on human rights, remembering Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, just to mention two examples of their commitment to the ideal of human respect and dignity.

Even today, according to Amnesty Ireland, executions are still routine there, dissidents are being imprisoned and tortured, and in areas which are scheduled for industrial development people are being uprooted from their homes without reparations. And despite all this, Bertie Ahern believes China is making progress on its human rights record.

He believes that China has progressed so much that those states which had reservations about human rights there had "moderated" their position and the EU was soon to do an about-turn on its embargo stance.

Now, it's quite obvious even to the most naive that China would not be a great venue for a Reclaim The Streets event. Nor does it have the equivalent of a Bord Pleanála for those who are thrown out of their homes on the orders of the state. There is still the mistreatment of Falun Gong devotees, some of whom are Irish-based and whose plight has been widely documented. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions is concerned at the almost total lack of rights for the country's workers. Only last week Human Rights Watch said that China "remains a highly repressive state."

The Taoiseach's attention span on those issues will undoubtedly be diverted by the fact that with a population of 1.3 billion people and the fifth-largest economy in the world, China offers untold trading potential to Irish businesses.

No doubt the 300 delegates accompanying him who represent 121 companies will encourage him to concentrate on the more positive side of the trip. Individually, they may care about the lack of human rights but the ghosts of Tiananmen Square won't be allowed intrude on the prospects of lucrative contracts. There's a time and place for idealism, and mainland China ain't the place.

IRELAND has a €500 million trade deficit with China and as one Government official remarked about the mission, "It's all about results - we have to drive up our exports to China."

That's what the largest-ever Irish trade mission to China is all about, and nothing else. Our Taoiseach's late conversion to socialism was avoided anytime he bumped into prime minister Wen Jiabao because there would be no point in rattling his hosts.

To the casual observer, it might seem a bit perplexing that he should refer to the likelihood of the EU lifting the arms embargo, and he was prepared to give it the nod. Unless it was merely to let the Chinese know he was no eejit on these matters: after all, why let the French take all the credit for pushing for the embargo to go. And in any case, a bit of the old blarney wouldn't be bad for business.

Most people would think that "neutral" Ireland has no vested interest in the arms industry. In practice, most people would be wrong, although officially they would be right.

There are no producers of arms in this country, as is generally understood by that term. What we do have are technology firms which manufacture products with both commercial and military applications, and dual-use licences are issued. The Government knows which ones are used for military purposes but does not reveal which companies apply for military or dual-use export licences.

Most of us didn't realise the extent to which this country exports military-related products. But as this newspaper revealed early this month - with the help of documents released under the Freedom of Information Act - the trade has been worth €26 billion since 1997. That's a handy little earner for companies in a country without an arms industry, and the exchequer must have got a tidy slice of the action. Figures from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment show that last year Irish companies profited by €26.7 million in direct military sales, which comprised 60 separate consignments. But that figure takes on a far different complexion when dual-use exports, with their potential military applications, are included. Those 400 consignments were worth a whopping €1.3 billion. It's no wonder Bertie Ahern is agitating for the EU to lift the arms embargo on China.

So far, the trade mission's Chinese trip has generated deals worth somewhere in the region of €70 million. No doubt Bertie Ahern's invitation to president

Hu Jintao to make a state visit here next year should be worth another few, and help balance that huge trade deficit even more.

The event will inevitably lead to more vociferous protest by activists in this country about the "progress" on human rights abuses there.

Certainly, such public expression will be more forthright than whatever discussions our Taoiseach had with the Chinese president and prime minister at their closed meetings.

He did suggest that Ireland could be of assistance in the development of China's own human rights culture. He also proposed a bilateral "programme of co-operation in the field of human rights," although the details have to be worked out.