I don’t normally post much about my research, but I have decided to start a new category to make a public note about inaccuracies in published pieces about the Wassenaar Arrangement.

Today we look at an article by David Manners, the Senior Components Editor of electronicsweekly.com. A few weeks ago he published an article on how “China [is] to benefit from US technology transfers“. In it, he reviews recent action by the US to change the way it licenses some technology to China, namely, to allow some companies exemption from having to file for individual export licenses.

The part that concerns me, though, is this paragraph:

The exemptions by the US government seem to contravene the Wassenaar Arrangement, made in 1996, by which 40 countries - including the UK, the US, Japan and Korea - agreed not to transfer to China advanced technologies which could be used for weapons manufacturing.

Nowhere in the documents of the Wassenaar Arrangement does it say that Member States are not to transfer items to China, or indeed any other state. Section I.4 of the Initial Elements states:

4. This Arrangement will not be directed against any state or group of states and will not impede bona fide civil transactions. Nor will it interfere with the rights of states to acquire legitimate means with which to defend themselves pursuant to Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations.

This information is quite readily available on the Wassenaar Arrangement’s website, so it concerns me that Manners also states that “[t]here have been complaints in the past from the Americans that European producers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment have sold machinery to China in breach of Wassenaar.” Either ‘American manufacturers’ also have a poor understanding of the Arrangement, or (and?) Manners doesn’t have his facts straight.

I have been told that misunderstandings of this sort are rampant in industry. Lets see how many are available in other publications…