On Wednesday, the European parliament voted to maintain the 15-year-old arms embargo against Beijing over its human rights record.

"We believe that the EU's arms embargo on China is the result of the Cold War and should be repealed," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told reporters in Beijing.

"We also oppose linking the arms embargo with other issues like human rights," she said.

"China has scored great progress in human rights in recent years and China and the EU have held 17 rounds of human rights dialogues which has been fruitful. Though the two sides have different views on human rights, it could be resolved through dialogue," Zhang said.

The European Parliament's vote went against the wishes of leading EU member-states like France and Germany, which have been lobbying for the lifting of sanctions imposed on China after it crushed the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in June, 1989.

The lifting of the arms embargo against China is likely to come up during an EU summit in Brussels in December.

The EU assembly, meeting in Strasbourg, France, voted by a show of hands to pass a non-binding resolution urging the 25 EU nations to "maintain the EU embargo on trade in arms with China."

In a debate on the EU's code of conduct on Tuesday, outgoing External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten backed the Parliament's resolution, saying China had to take "concrete steps" to improve its human rights record before the EU could lift the arms embargo.