China hits the European agenda

The move of president Chirac of France to put the ongoing embargo on selling weapon systems to China on the agenda has put China firmly on the political agenda again. The embargo is in place since 1989, when the Chinese army ended the protest at Tiananmen Square.
That was a long time ago. In December 2003 I met the spokesman on foreign policy of the social-democrat party in the Dutch parliament, Bert Koenders, who was kind enough to receive the first copy of my book on China.
He admitted that countries like Kongo and Ethiopia appear more often on the agenda of the Dutch parliament than China. It must have been four years earlier that the Dutch parliament discussed trade relations with China.
Obvious there is now a new opportunity to discuss the relationship with China. A majority in the parliament was against lifting the ban on weapon trade with China because of its human rights record, but the government decided to ignore that majority decision. Now media are calling me to get a decent opinion on the whole thing.
What I find strange about the whole discussion is that nobody bothers to define 'human rights' more precise: that would also create a nice benchmark for the moment when parliaments and governments might decide to lift that ban.
Guess that the death penalty is no argument, since the US has the same policy, although the number in executions in China might be higher. I'm following the media discussion here in the US right now and - say many Americans - they are controlled by big companies and the interest of the establishment. Still different from China, but not that much. And since the US government has started to arrest journalists without journalist visa at their borders, press freedom should perhaps not be a criterion anymore.
In short: I need benchmarks: what human rights should improve where. Now the discussion is really not a very substantial one.