Blinken expresses US concerns over Chinese supplies to Russian military

Secretary of state Antony Blinken has told Xi Jinping that the United States is seriously concerned about Chinese companies supplying machine tools that could help Russia’s military. But Mr Blinken declined to say after their meeting in the Great Hall of the People what action Washington would take if the exports did not stop.

“All I can tell you is I was extremely clear about our concerns in some detail, but we’ll have to see what actions follow from that,” he told reporters at the US embassy in Beijing.

“It is absolutely critical that the support that it’s providing, not in terms of weapons, but components for the defence industrial base, things like machine tools, microelectronics, where it is overwhelmingly the number one supplier to Russia, that’s having a material effect in Ukraine and against Ukraine. But it’s also having a material effect in creating a growing threat that Russia poses to countries in Europe and it’s something that has captured their attention in a very intense way.”

Mr Blinken was speaking at the end of a three-day visit to China, the latest in a succession of trips by senior US officials since Mr Xi met Joe Biden in San Francisco last November. Mr Xi told Mr Blinken that there had been good progress in stabilising the relationship between the two countries since that summit but that there were still issues that needed to be addressed.

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“China is happy to see a confident, open, prosperous and thriving United States. We hope the US can also look at China’s development in a positive light. 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-US relationship to truly stabilise, improve and move forward,” he said.

Mr Biden this week signed a law that could expel TikTok from the US if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell it and he has threatened new tariffs on Chinese goods. The US and the European Union have both expressed concerns about Chinese manufacturers producing too many solar panels, electric vehicles and batteries and flooding the global market with them.

“This is a movie that we’ve seen before, and we know how it ends, with American businesses shuttered and American jobs lost. President Biden will not let this happen on his watch. We’ll do what’s necessary to ensure that American workers can compete on a level playing field,” Mr Blinken said.

Earlier, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said relations between China and the US risked a return to a downward spiral unless Washington respected Beijing’s core interests.

“China’s legitimate development rights have been unreasonably suppressed and our core interests are facing challenges,” he said. “China’s concerns are consistent. We have always called for respect of each other’s core interests and urge the United States not to interfere in China’s internal affairs, not to hold China’s development back, and not to step on China’s red lines on China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests.”

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