You do realise that just because there are leadership changes in Beijing does not mean China suddenly forget everything that happened before the change-overs right?
The scheduled changes are not set in stone, and Chinese leaders do not go and hide in a cave and cut themselves off from the rest of the world after they hand over power. If there is a sudden diplomatic crisis that develops during the Beijing leadership change over, the hand off of powers could be temporarily suspended while China deals with the sudden crisis, or the old leaders could stay on as advisors to help the new ones handle the crisis.
In addition, it is perfectly possible that the new incoming Chinese leaders would take personal offence if it looks obvious that someone had tried to take advantage of their leadership transition, and indeed, a new leader may well want to act tougher than usual in their first leadership challenge as a means of establishing themselves with their new colleges, the Chinese people and international leaders.
All in all, banking on China somehow being too wrapped up in leadership changes to allow something as massive as this slip between the cracks is laughable at best.
It doesn't make sense and will simply never happen like that.
In fact, as I have alluded to above, the Chinese leadership change is probably one of the worst possible times for Germany to announce something like this.
With the way the EU economy is doing, and the fact that orders from China is one of the few things keeping the German economy from suffering as much as most of it's fellow EU members, well, German will have to be absolutely idiotic to risk all that over a few billions of arms sales. Hell, even if we discount the likely cost, it's a terrible time to make any bet since China's new leaders are a complete unknown quantity to the west, and so there is simply no reasonable way to predict how they might react to something like this.
So not only would Germany be making a giant wager, it will be doing so effectively blind. Clearly that is simply a ridiculous suggestion when you realise what it means.
If the Euros are so desperate for arms sales, a far far more lucrative and less risky way would be simply for them to scrap their arms embargo against China.
roportional: to size of country selling weapons x potency of weapons they sell + a constant where the PRC will always protest. So if no subs are sold the PRC will still protest but will likely be their only response)
