The West calls out China’s war aid to Russia
Beijing paying an increasing economic price for supporting Putin's invasion of Ukraine, new trade sanctions likely.
Western leaders are increasingly confronting the trade and economic support China provides Russia as a systematic problem that must be addressed as efforts to end the war in Ukraine accelerate.
US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns in the past week has spoken repeatedly about China’s support for Russia.
Beijing misjudged how its support for Russia and its war in Ukraine would be received by European nations who now see China as a ‘systemic rival’ in an ‘existential war’, Ambassador Burns said in an interview on Bloomberg television June 27.
‘The Chinese have miscalculated,’ Burns told Bloomberg. ‘The Chinese did not understand the core value that we place in our part of the world on peace and unity in Europe itself. And you've seen the EU and NATO call China a systemic rival in part because of this.’
Europe is ‘acting strategically now, in outright opposition to what the Chinese have done, what the PRC has done to support Russia in the war of Ukraine,’ Burns said.
‘For Europeans, as well as for Canadians and Americans, this is an existential war. We lived in a Cold War, four and a half decades with a divided Europe. One of the great, great achievements of the end of the Cold War was a free, democratic, and united Europe with no divisions in it whatsoever. Putin is now trying to divide Europe,’ Burns said.
The US ambassador raised US and European concerns about China’s aid to Russia during a June 26 seminar in Shanghai about China-US relations centered on the life of Henry Kissinger, a former US Secretary of State and champion of US-China business ties who died last year.
‘We think it’s a major mistake to allow Chinese companies, by the thousands, to be sending so many components, technology components — microprocessors, nitrocellulose — to Russia to reinforce and strengthen the defense industrial base of the Russian Federation for this brutal war,’ Burns said according to The Associated Press.
China ‘is not neutral, but has effectively sided with Russia in this war,’ Burns said, adding that the decision directly contradicted China’s longstanding insistence on ‘sovereignty and territorial integrity’.
China exported about $110 billion to Russia in 2023 and another $30 billion via indirect shipments, according to Joe Webster, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, who studies trade flows between China and Russia.
Beijing appears to be ‘willing to pay a price for this facilitation of war effort with Russia,’ Webster told The Telegraph newspaper. ‘China is losing access to some of the world's best technology because of this trade,’ and ‘damaging its prospects’ in Europe and the US, its two largest export markets.
‘Without Chinese exports, Russia very well could have lost this conflict already,’ Webster said.
Germany Warns China
German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck meeting in Shanghai with Chinese trade and industry ministers called on China to stop exporting goods to Russia that could be used in the war on Ukraine.
‘If products that are used in the military complex would no longer be imported from China, this would also help the economic relationship between our two countries,’ Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, said in public remarks on June 22.
China’s trade with Russia has increased substantially since the war started in 2022 despite Western economic and financial sanctions on Russia. Chinese exports to Russia are up more than 40 percent over last year, largely in so-called dual-use goods, Habeck said.
In Washington, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned in a June 18 press briefing with outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg the US sees China supplying machine tools and microchips to Russia’s ‘defense industrial base’.
‘That has to stop,’ Blinken said.
G7 Threatens Sanctions
The US and European commentary comes after leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations meeting in Apulia, Italy, on June 14 condemned China for ‘enabling’ Russia’s war.
‘China’s ongoing support for Russia’s defense industrial base is enabling Russia to maintain its illegal war in Ukraine and has significant and broad-based security implications,’ the G7 leaders said in a communique.
‘We call on China to cease the transfer of dual-use materials, including weapons components and equipment, that are inputs for Russia’s defense sector,’ the G7 said.
‘We will continue taking measures against actors in China and third countries that materially support Russia’s war machine, including financial institutions, consistent with our legal systems, and other entities in China that facilitate Russia’s acquisition of items for its defense industrial base,’ the joint statement said, threatening to ‘restrict access to our financial systems’.
For sanctions to be effective, Webster advises the West must look at China and Russia’s transshipment trade through Kyrgyzstan and others. Further, Beijing is likely to transfer financial action to local and regional banks that do not have international exposure, Webster said.
South China Sea tensions
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke on June 26 with his Philippine counterpart Eduardo M. Año about Chinese maritime actions in the South China Sea.
‘Sullivan reiterated ironclad US commitment to the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, which extends to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft—to include those of its Coast Guard—anywhere in the South China Sea,’ the White House said in a readout of the call
A Chinese vessel and a Philippine supply boat collided near Second Thomas Shoal in the disputed Spratly Islands on June 17. Beijing blamed the Philippines. Manila called the Chinese statement ‘deceptive’.
Beijing has been dismissive of Philippine and US concerns about China’s maritime claims in what the United Nations says are Filipino waters by international law.
‘The US' stance pretends that it is still the ‘world's police’ and the master of the Asia-Pacific region,’ state-run China People’s Daily opined on June 19. ‘As an external force, the US manipulates camp confrontations for geopolitical purposes and advances military deployments and actions in the South China Sea, which is the root cause of the escalation of disputes and conflicts in the region.’
Diplomatic Interference?
Despite efforts on both sides to stabilize the rocky US-China relationship through diplomacy and presidential summits, the tone of diplomatic contact between the two superpowers appears strained.
In a June 25 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ambassador Burns accused authorities in Beijing of stirring anti-American sentiment with the Chinese public and preventing people from attending public diplomacy events produced by the US embassy.
There had been 61 documentary screenings, concerts, debates and other events since Xi and Biden met in San Francisco in November that China’s Ministry of State Security has dissuaded Chinese citizens from attending, Burns said.
People who attended US embassy events were summoned by authorities, sometimes late at night. ‘They say they are in favor of our two populations coming together, but they are deploying impressive measures to make that impossible,’ Burns said.
— By William Roberts