In September, China drew the world's attention by winning a contract to sell HQ-9 anti-aircraft missile systems to Turkey for US$3 billion to the annoyance of the United States.
Six months ago, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an independent resource on global security, publicized a global ranking that places China as the world's fifth-largest arms exporter, overtaking the UK.
The HQ-9 system deal resulted in remarkable publicity, through which China declared its determination to become a big power like the US and Britain in terms of weapons exports, a senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences said.
Sam Roggeveen, a senior researcher at the Australian thinktank Lowy Institute for International Policy, said that China's client sources are not diversified. The rising economic power remains lonely in the international weapons market.
As for the 2013 arms export yearbook compiled by SIPRI on all the weapons China sold to foreign buyers, 74% were shipped to Asia, 13% to Africa, 6% to South America and the remaining 7% to the Middle East.
"Even if it can overcome technical challenges, producing world-class weapon systems, China still has to cross diplomatic and political barriers," Roggeveen stated. The Chinese arms industry must prove to not just China's diplomatic allies, poor nations or politically isolated countries, but also every other possible buyer in the world that China is a reliable weapons exporter, he added.
Citing SIPRI's newest data, the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly reported that the United States remained the world's largest weapon exporter, accounting for a 30% share of the global total. Each year, the US's arms sales touched US$8 billion on an average, while China generated sales worth US$1.1 billion, the journal noted.
Source: Want China Times
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