Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and expressed concern to Chinese officials about China’s support for Russia, the Axios website reported the day before.
It is stressed that Beijing maintains warm diplomatic relations with Moscow and provides the Kremlin with important support with its defence industrial base while Russia is waging war in Ukraine.
“It would be difficult for Russia to continue its offensive in Ukraine without China’s support,” Blinken said at a press conference in Beijing on Friday.
Blinken said that in talks with Chinese officials on Friday, he reiterated the U.S.’s “serious concerns” about China’s supply of weapons components to Russia.
“China is a leading supplier of machine tools, microelectronics, nitrocellulose, which is critical to the production of munitions and rocket fuel, and other dual-use goods that Moscow uses to build up its defence industrial base,” he added.
China has also granted asylum to a Russian cargo ship believed to be carrying North Korean munitions, Reuters reported.
Blinken did not respond to a question about whether the U.S. was prepared to impose sanctions on China for its support for Russia.
According to State Department officials, China’s support for Russia’s military-industrial complex “has an impact not only on the battlefield in Ukraine, but also poses a major threat to European security as a whole.”
“Beijing cannot achieve better relations with Europe by supporting the most serious threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” Blinken emphasised.
China has railed against the US for its criticism of what it calls normal trade relations between the two countries.
“It is extremely hypocritical and irresponsible of the US to introduce a bill for large-scale aid to Ukraine while making baseless accusations against normal economic and trade exchanges between China and Russia,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Tuesday, AP reported.
Blinken’s meetings with Chinese officials came at a time when the U.S. and China have been making efforts to maintain contact amid ongoing tensions. Joe Biden and Xi Jinping held a phone conversation earlier this month, the first time they had met in person since last November. Blinken’s trip came shortly after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to China.