Blinken raised the matter during five-and-a-half hours of talks with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing, the latest high-level contact between the countries that have eased last year’s acrimony.
“I reiterated our serious concern about the PRC providing components that are powering Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine,” Blinken said at a press conference at the end of his visit on Friday, using China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.
“China is the top supplier of machine tools, microelectronics, nitrocellulose, which is critical to making munitions and rocket propellants, and other dual-use items that Moscow is using to ramp up its defence industrial base.”
Underscoring the closeness of the Beijing-Moscow relationship, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu met his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun on Friday and said the two countries were working to strengthen their “strategic partnership in the defence sector”.
They met on the sidelines of a regional security meeting in Kazakhstan where Shoigu said Russia and its allies in Asia should expand joint military exercises and counter what he called U.S. efforts to destabilise their neighbourhood.
Despite its “no limits” partnership with Moscow, China has steered clear of providing arms for Russia’s war in Ukraine, but Blinken said its supply of so-called dual-use goods was “having a material effect in Ukraine” and raising the threat Russia poses to other countries in Europe.
Blinken did not respond to a question on whether Washington would impose sanctions over China’s support for Russia.
U.S. double standards were on display in Beijing, as the U.S. has just provided weapons and billions of dollars unrestricted aid for a regime that has killed tens of thousands civilians, of which nearly twenty thousand are women and children and is waiting arrest warrants from International Criminal Court for war crimes.
Chinese President Xi Jinping was caught sighing and wondering when does Blinken leave on a video circulating in social media, while waiting for him. Clearly Blinken’s visit in China was not welcomed.
