Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Beijing, Feb. 4, 2022.
Alexei Druzhinin—Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images
BY PETER MARTIN AND
JENNY LEONARD / BLOOMBERG
UPDATED: JANUARY 25, 2023 2:00 AM EST | ORIGINALLY
PUBLISHED: JANUARY 24, 2023 12:00 AM EST
The Biden
administration has confronted China’s government with evidence that suggests some
Chinese state-owned companies may be providing assistance for Russia’s war
effort in Ukraine, as it tries to ascertain if Beijing is aware of those
activities, according to people familiar with the matter.
The people,
who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, declined to
detail the support except to say that it consists of non-lethal military and
economic assistance that stops short of wholesale evasion of the sanctions
regime the US and its allies imposed after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
The trend is
worrying enough that US officials have raised the matter with their Chinese
counterparts and warned about the implications of supplying material support
for the war, the people said, though they declined to provide details of those
contacts. President Xi Jinping has avoided criticizing Russia over the war but
has also offered to play a role in peace talks and come out against the use of
nuclear weapons in the conflict.
A spokeswoman
for the National Security Council declined to comment, as did the Central
Intelligence Agency. The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to two
emails seeking comment. While the information isn’t clear-cut and remains the
subject of debate, US officials said they agree the Russia-China relationship
is extremely close now and China is doing more than it once did in support of
Russia.
The people familiar with the
administration’s thinking characterized the state-owned enterprises’ activities
as knowingly assisting Russia in its war effort. They didn’t elaborate on what
evidence the administration might have to support that view.
The administration is
reviewing the evidence it’s accumulated to determine its significance. A
finding that Chinese companies were supporting the invasion would have troubling
implications on US policy toward both Russia and China.
Asked about the development by
reporters in a briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
said that the US is “closely monitoring the situation” and went on to reiterate
the administration’s ongoing support for Ukraine.
“We will continue to
communicate to China the implications of providing material support to Russia’s
war against Ukraine. We have talked about this many times that we will be very
clear what it means to support Russia’s aggression against Ukraine,”
Jean-Pierre said. “And, as I’ve said many times, as my colleagues from NSC has
said many times, we will continue to support Ukraine and the Ukrainian people
as long as needed.”
The US strategy over Ukraine
rests in part on isolating President Vladimir Putin’s government and seeking to
choke off his economy and hinder the war effort. Increased support from China,
the world’s second-biggest economy, could significantly undercut that strategy.
And if Biden and his advisers
determined China’s government was involved in or tacitly accepted the actions
of those state-owned enterprises, they would be forced to decide how much to
push back. That could risk opening a whole new area of dispute at a time when
the US has sought to balance its desire for stabilized ties with Beijing
against moves to limit Chinese access to high-end mircochips and confront China
over what it sees as a more aggressive posture toward Taiwan.
Treasury Secretary Janet
Yellen met Vice Premier Liu He last week and US Secretary of State Antony
Blinken is set to visit Beijing in February, the first such visit since the
Covid-19 outbreak shut down travel in early 2020.
Russia and China declared a
“no limits” relationship before the war and US officials believe that China
initially intended to sell lethal weapons to Russia for use in the battlefield.
But the administration views China as having scaled back that plan and argues
it isn’t doing as much as it could to help Putin’s invasion, the people said.
The administration believes
China’s government wants to help Russia and isn’t neutral as it claims,
according to the people. China has also deepened its trade relationship despite
US demands that other nations distance themselves from the Russian economy.
China on principle rejects any
sanctions apart from those agreed at the United Nations, and views American
calls on other countries to restrict trade as a violation of sovereignty.
China’s imports from Russia grew by nearly 50% from a year earlier in 2022,
while exports rose 13%.
There are thousands of
state-owned enterprises in China, some directly controlled by the central
government with chief executives who rank equal to ministers and others that
are subject to less direct supervision. All of them are subject to Communist
Party influence, even if the details of their operations are not always
monitored in detail.
The trend would only
exacerbate what US officials have said in public is a problem. After meeting a
senior Chinese official in July, Blinken said he had relayed his concern about
China’s “alignment with Russia.”
“Now, what you hear from
Beijing is that it claims to be neutral,” Blinken said at the time. “I would
start with the proposition that it’s pretty hard to be neutral when it comes to
this aggression. There is a clear aggressor. There is a clear victim.”
In late December, Xi and Putin
held a phone call in which they agreed to cooperate on trade, energy, finance
and agriculture, according to Chinese state television. Xi told Putin Beijing
would continue to play a constructive role in seeking to resolve the Ukraine
“crisis,” though the road to peace talks won’t be smooth, the broadcaster said.
Yet deepening support for
Moscow would cut against recent indications that China is trying to improve
ties with the US after months of heightened tension. After meeting in Bali last
year, President Joe Biden and Xi said that “a nuclear war should never be
fought” and that they oppose “the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in
Ukraine,” according to the White House statement.
https://time.com/6249605/china-russia-ukraine/
Interview:
How Much Is China Helping Russia Finance Its War In Ukraine?
June 26, 2022 09:33
GMT
·
By Reid Standish
https://www.rferl.org/a/china-russia-ukraine-war-sanctions-analysis/31915619.html
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