China replaces Britain in world's top five arms exporters. US/Russia dominate
China has become the world's fifth-largest arms exporter, a respected Sweden-based think tank said on Monday, its highest ranking since the Cold War, with Pakistan the main recipient.
China's volume of weapons exports between 2008 and 2012 rose 162 percent compared to the previous five year period, with its share of the global arms trade rising from 2 percent to 5 percent, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.
China replaces Britain in the top five arms-dealing countries between 2008 and 2012, a group dominated by the United States and Russia, which accounted for 30 percent and 26 percent of weapons exports, SIPRI said.
"China is establishing itself as a significant arms supplier to a growing number of important recipient states," Paul Holtom, director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program, said in a statement.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/17/us-china-arms-exports-idUSBRE92G0L120130317
Before we start talking about keeping guns away from me and you out of fear each other can we start first by not selling guns to every damned nation on the earth?
But then...other countries do it so we need to balance that out so folks have guns to defend themselves (yes, having a gun can help you do so in the 21st century as it always has).
Progress, technology, won't reverse or stop. Guns will never go away no matter how much one wishes such to be so. Allowing only the few to have such advances limits power to the wealthy and politicians.
But we can intelligently manage such things - like nukes - we own them as a group. And we desire to limit their spread because their power is many times that of other things. Now other, independent countries, want them to defend themselves from other countries that have the same - should we attack other countries who want them?
Do you think other countries have the right to have the same/similar weapons to defends themselves or only a few?