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  And there's been a surge in European export licenses to China for goods - about $550 million in 2003 alone - that are designed for war or could have military and civilian applications, a gauge of Europe's growing willingness to profit from China's military progress.

If Europe's nearly 16-year-old embargo is lifted, the United States fears that cutting-edge technology, weapons and materiel from the continent's large military industry could hone the effectiveness of Russian armaments that China has been buying massively, increasing its potential to threaten U.S.-aligned Taiwan and Japan.

Exactly what the Chinese PLA, the world's largest army by troop numbers, may be getting from Europe is difficult to determine, because sales are shrouded by government bureaucracy, secretiveness and guidelines with loopholes, experts in Europe and the United States say.

Rep. Tom Lantos, senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, said U.S. lawmakers "will take strong, strong and outraged retaliatory action" if the embargo is lifted.

The U.S. Congress is united against "this degree of arrogant, in-your-face, sale to a communist dictatorship of advanced military equipment," Lantos said in a telephone interview.

"People who advocate it in Europe should go down to the American military cemeteries and remind themselves of the lives we sacrificed to liberate Europe," he said.

Europe's "embargo on trade in arms with China" was simply one line in a declaration by European leaders in June 1989 who condemned Chinese authorities' "brutal repression" of democracy demonstrations centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Europe never defined what exactly should not be sold to the Chinese and different governments have interpreted the embargo more loosely than others, experts say.

France, for instance, completed deliveries of helicopters, and radars and missiles for Chinese destroyers, that were ordered before the embargo, and took an order in 1992 for light helicopters that were delivered between 1995-2002, according to the arms transfer database of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden.

The institute, which is mainly financed by the Swedish government, says Italy also completed deliveries of missiles for combat aircraft in 1991 and radars for Chinese destroyers in 2001.

European Union figures for 2003, the latest available, show France, Italy, Britain, the Czech Republic and Germany issued licenses to China worth about $550 million at today's rates for military list exports, which can include weapons and other equipment with possible military applications. That's up from about $277 million in 2002 and nearly $72 million in 2001.

Although licenses don't always translate into sales and there's scant information on what actually gets delivered, the increase suggests European governments are "becoming happier and happier to authorize exports to China," said Roy Isbister of the London-based arms control lobbying group Saferworld.

Britain has said that under the embargo it will not sell machine guns, bombs or other such lethal weapons to China or military aircraft, fighting ships and armored fighting vehicles.

"But they will sell components for weapons systems," Isbister said in a phone interview. "In theory, you could sell all the components of a combat aircraft and a spanner and stay within (Britain's) interpretation of the embargo."

In Germany, MTU Friedrichshafen's contract from China for submarine engines did not require an export license, said Daniel Reinhardt, a spokesman for the company that's 88 percent owned by DaimlerChrysler. Reinhardt wouldn't say how many engines were involved or say if they have been delivered. The company announced the "large-scale" contract in Sept. 2000.

The U.S. Defense Department indicated in a report to Congress that MTU engines have gone into a new class of Chinese submarine that also are probably fitted with French-designed sonars and which "could play a significant role" in countering U.S. naval forces in the Pacific.

A French official said that while France led Europe in issuing about $225 million worth of military export licenses for China in 2003, only about one in 10 actually result in a delivery.

Items approved in 2003 were non-lethal and included spare parts for helicopters, radars for air traffic control and equipment to help fire and rescue services contain chemical contamination at industrial sites, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

European Union officials insist that exports to China are closely watched under a nonbinding code of conduct meant to guide EU countries' arms sales.

Adopted in 1998, the code is being strengthened under a review that started last year, EU officials say. It hasn't been made public, but officials say the updated code should help ensure that lifting the embargo doesn't produce a flood of destabilizing military exports to China.

European governments also plan to share more information about sales to countries emerging from embargoes and to dispatch a delegation to the United States and Japan to allay concerns about lifting the embargo on China, said an official at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

European leaders said in December that ending the embargo shouldn't result in either a "quantitative" or "qualitative" increase in sales to China.

But resisting the Chinese market has long proved difficult.

China is not comfortable relying on Russia for its weaponry and is "looking to the Europeans for the smart, high-tech stuff," said Adam Ward, an East Asia expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Unlike the United States, Europe doesn't have troops in that part of Asia and isn't as attuned as Washington to China's growing military potential, Ward added. Ending the embargo could win favor in Beijing for France and Germany, which are leading the push to lift it, helping their sales of nonmilitary items like civilian planes and high-speed trains.

"Europe as a whole doesn't have a very coherent view of China," said Ward. "But it does have a very clear view of China as an economic opportunity."

© 2005 The Associated Press

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