In Beijing, Blinken confronts China over ‘powering’ Russia’s war
BEIJING — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised concerns on Friday about China’s support for Russia’s military, one of the many issues threatening to sour the recent improvement in relations between the world’s biggest economies.
Blinken raised the matter during five and a half hours of talks with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing, the latest high-level contact between the countries that have eased last year’s acrimony.
“I reiterated our serious concern about the PRC providing components that are powering Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine,” Blinken said at a press conference at the end of his visit on Friday, using China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China. “China is the top supplier of machine tools, microelectronics, nitrocellulose, which is critical to making munitions and rocket propellants, and other dual-use items that Moscow is using to ramp up its defence industrial base.”
Underscoring the closeness of the Beijing-moscow relationship, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu met his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun on Friday and said the two countries were working to strengthen their “strategic partnership in the defence sector.”
They met on the sidelines of a regional security meeting in Kazakhstan where Shoigu said Russia and its allies in Asia should expand joint military exercises and counter what he called U.S. efforts to destabilise their neighbourhood.
Despite its “no limits” partnership with Moscow, China has steered clear of providing arms for Russia’s war in Ukraine, but Blinken said its supply of so-called dual-use goods was “having a material effect in Ukraine” and raising the threat Russia poses to other countries in Europe.
Blinken did not respond to a question on whether Washington would impose sanctions over China’s support for Russia.
The U.S. officials say such assistance risks hurting the broader bilateral relationship, even as ties stabilise after being hit by then-house Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in 2022 and the U.S. downing of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon in February 2023.
China has said it has not provided weaponry to any party, adding that it is “not a producer of or party involved in the Ukraine crisis”. However, it says that normal trade between China and Russia should not be interrupted or restricted.
STEADYING THE SHIP
Blinken’s visit produced little progress on other contentious issues, including U.S. complaints about cheap Chinese exports and tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea. Instead, both sides were focusing on pragmatic issues such as people-to-people exchanges.
In addition to his talks with Wang, Blinken met Chinese President Xi Jinping, who reiterated Beijing’s concerns that the United States was suppressing its economic development.
“This is a fundamental issue that must be addressed, just like the first button of a shirt that must be put right, in order for the China-u.s. relationship to truly stabilize, improve and move forward,” Xi said.