During his recent visit of China, Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked President Xi to end China’s support of the Russian defense industry. Indeed, “We have engaged with China from the start of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and urged them not to provide Russia with arms, with weapons that would fuel the aggression,” said Secretary Blinken.
“And I think it’s fair to say that China has not directly supplied Russia with weapons, with missiles, with munitions. Iran is doing it; North Korea is doing it,” he said.
“However, what China is doing is providing invaluable support to Russia’s defense industrial base that’s helping Russia deal with the mass oppression that’s been exerted through sanctions, through export controls, and other measures.”
“If you look at what Russia’s done over the last year in terms of its production of munitions, missiles, tanks, and armored vehicles, it’s produced them at a faster pace than at any time in its modern history, including during the Cold War as the Soviet Union,” said Secretary Blinken.
“How has it been able to do that? Because it’s getting massive inputs of machine tools, microelectronics, optics, mostly coming from China. Seventy percent of the machine tools, 90 percent of the microelectronics are coming from China. Now, these are dual-use items, but we know very clearly where so many of them are going.”
“This poses two problems,” said Secretary Blinken. “It is enabling Russia to continue the aggression against Ukraine, so it’s perpetuating a war that China says it would like to see come to an end, as all of us would. But second, it’s also enabling Russia to rebuild a defense industrial base that countries throughout Europe are deeply concerned will be turned against them after Ukraine is done.”
And so it is that even as China “is seeking better relations with countries in Europe, it’s also fueling the greatest challenge to European security since the end of the Cold War,” said Secretary Blinken.
“I know the deep concern that Europeans have about this support for the defense industrial base in Russia, because, again, this poses a threat to Europe’s security – not only Ukraine, but all of Europe,” he said. “And as I shared with my Chinese colleagues, you can’t have it both ways.”
