R. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, said the Biden administration is making a final push to persuade China to stop transferring equipment to Russia for the Ukraine war.
In an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Burns claimed that about 400 Chinese companies supply Russia with so-called dual-use products that can be used for both military and commercial purposes. He also said that China supplies 90% of the microelectronics used in Russia's war effort.
With less than two weeks left until President-elect Donald J. Trump's inauguration, Burns will raise the administration's concerns about Russia and China's links with Iran and North Korea in a series of meetings with Chinese ministers this week. I am doing it. Early next week. He will be leaving the country this Tuesday.
More broadly, Burns said that China's policy toward Russia, Iran, and North Korea reflects Beijing's desire to play a leading role in global order international initiatives such as the World Trade Organization and the Paris Agreement on climate change. He said it was contradictory.
“Their actions are destructive because they are aligned with the most untrustworthy actors of disorder in the international system,” he said. “So the Chinese can't have both sides. They have to make a decision here.”
He also said China, which buys a lot of oil from Iran, should use its influence to insist that Iran-backed Houthi militias stop attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
Burns met this week with senior officials, including Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu and Liu Jianchao, who heads the Chinese Communist Party's international department and is expected to become the next foreign minister. He has another meeting next week.
China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond. However, in a recent press conference, Chinese officials denied that they supply military drones and other dual-use products to Russia or Ukraine.
“China never provides weapons to any party to a conflict and strictly controls the export of dual-purpose goods, and the scope and measures of China's export controls on drones are among the strictest in the world,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin said. Ken said in December. 17.
Chinese officials also say Western countries have imposed sanctions on Iran's oil sales because of its nuclear weapons program, but the United Nations has not. As a result, China feels no legal obligation to avoid buying Iranian crude, which is sold at a deep discount to world prices because other countries shun it.
China has quadrupled Iranian oil imports in the nearly two years since brokering an Iran peace deal with Saudi Arabia, and last year bought more than 90% of Iranian oil exports, according to Kupler, a Vienna-based company that specializes in tracking Iranian oil shipments. . Oil sales to China by Iran's state-owned oil sector account for more than 5% of Iran's overall economy and cover most of the Iranian government's business operations.
Iran has experienced a series of setbacks, including Israeli air attacks on Tehran's air defenses and Israel's defeat of Iran's main ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. China responded by sending one of its four vice prime ministers, Zhang Guoqing, to meet Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran last month.
“China supports Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty, security, territorial integrity, legitimate rights and interests,” Zhang said in Tehran.
Kpler senior analyst Andon Pavlov said Thursday that the Biden administration is expected to expand its blacklist of tankers carrying Russian and Iranian oil, and that China is likely to ban these vessels from entering its ports. Ta. Reuters reported this week that authorities in Shandong province, a major entry point for Chinese Iranian oil, had begun banning blacklisted tankers from the port.
But Pavlov said Iran's method of shipping oil to China is highly opaque, making it difficult to predict the effects of such measures.
Mr. Burns' meetings with Chinese officials this week and next are part of a broader recent diplomatic effort by the Biden administration. President Biden met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a conference in Peru in November, and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with Xi in Beijing in August.
Burns declined to predict the Trump administration's likely China policy, but said communication between the two countries' militaries had improved to prevent accidental conflict. And last October, for the first time in 13 years, China allowed the retrieval of the remains of American soldiers who went missing in action during World War II.
He also praised recent steps by China to restrict exports of chemicals used to make fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is the leading cause of drug overdose deaths in the United States. Burns said China has arrested 300 people involved in the fentanyl industry, shut down many online stores selling precursor chemicals to make fentanyl, and exported 55 types of precursor chemicals and synthetic drugs. was prohibited.
Lee You contributed to the research.
