{"id":5235,"date":"2023-01-25T18:06:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T18:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/?p=5235"},"modified":"2023-01-25T18:56:05","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T18:56:05","slug":"u-s-confronts-china-over-state-owned-companies-support-for-russias-war-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/u-s-confronts-china-over-state-owned-companies-support-for-russias-war-effort\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Confronts China Over State-Owned Companies\u2019 Support for Russia\u2019s War Effort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BY Peter Martin And Jenny Leonard<\/em> \/ BLOOMBERG

The Biden administration has confronted China\u2019s government with evidence that suggests some Chinese state-owned companies may be providing assistance for Russia\u2019s war effort in Ukraine, as it tries to ascertain if Beijing is aware of those activities, according to people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined to comment, as did the Central Intelligence Agency. The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn\u2019t respond to two emails seeking comment. While the information isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people familiar with the administration\u2019s thinking characterized the state-owned enterprises\u2019 activities as knowingly assisting Russia in its war effort. They didn\u2019t elaborate on what evidence the administration might have to support that view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The administration is reviewing the evidence it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked about the development by reporters in a briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the US is \u201cclosely monitoring the situation\u201d and went on to reiterate the administration\u2019s ongoing support for Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe will continue to communicate to China the implications of providing material support to Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine. We have talked about this many times that we will be very clear what it means to support Russia\u2019s aggression against Ukraine,\u201d Jean-Pierre said. \u201cAnd, as I\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US strategy over Ukraine rests in part on isolating President Vladimir Putin\u2019s government and seeking to choke off his economy and hinder the war effort. Increased support from China, the world\u2019s second-biggest economy, could significantly undercut that strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if Biden and his advisers determined China\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia and China declared a \u201cno limits\u201d 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\u2019t doing as much as it could to help Putin\u2019s invasion, the people said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The administration believes China\u2019s government wants to help Russia and isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s imports from Russia grew by nearly 50% from a year earlier in 2022, while exports rose 13%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s \u201calignment with Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow, what you hear from Beijing is that it claims to be neutral,\u201d Blinken said at the time. \u201cI would start with the proposition that it\u2019s pretty hard to be neutral when it comes to this aggression. There is a clear aggressor. There is a clear victim.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201ccrisis,\u201d though the road to peace talks won\u2019t be smooth, the broadcaster said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201ca nuclear war should never be fought\u201d and that they oppose \u201cthe use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine,\u201d according to the White House statement.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY Peter Martin And Jenny Leonard \/ BLOOMBERGThe Biden administration has confronted China\u2019s government with evidence that suggests some Chinese state-owned companies may be providing assistance for Russia\u2019s 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 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":5236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,183,218,186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-219","category-asian-issues","category-reports-and-articles","category-186"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5238,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235\/revisions\/5238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ameforum.net\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}