The US has warned China about providing Russia with weapons and other lethal aid for the invasion of Ukraine and is watching closely to ensure Beijing’s diplomatic and economic support to Moscow doesn’t go any further, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday.
(Bloomberg) — The US has warned China about providing Russia with weapons and other lethal aid for the invasion of Ukraine and is watching closely to ensure Beijing’s diplomatic and economic support to Moscow doesn’t go any further, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday.
“We have not yet seen the PRC provide Russia with lethal aid, but we don’t believe they’ve taken it off the table either — we are concerned,” Price said, referring to the country by its formal name, the People’s Republic of China. “We’re monitoring, very vigilantly, for potential violations.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken confronted his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi with concerns that China was weighing whether to provide material support to Russia when the two diplomats met on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich over the weekend.
The growing US concern with China using its economic heft to propel Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only deepened the mistrust between Washington and Beijing after President Joe Biden ordered the US Air Force to shoot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon earlier this month.
China has already supported Russia in other ways, including by boosting Moscow’s propaganda messages, Price said on Wednesday. The US has been clear with Beijing that there will be real consequences for bilateral relations if China begins to try and tilt the battlefield to Russia’s advantage, Price said. He said the US wouldn’t hesitate to sanction Chinese companies but declined to say exactly what else the US would do — noting that an “ambiguous” approach serves US interests.
“The reputational cost that the PRC is enduring is already very real because the rest of the world sees the PRC, despite its veneer of neutrality, its self professed neutrality, provide important forms of support to Russia already,” he said. “So the rest of the world is watching this. We are watching very closely to determine if the PRC does actually decide to take that step to provide lethal aid.”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.