A White House official on Tuesday pushed back against criticism that US sanctions and export controls on Russia have driven the country closer to China, saying Washington and its partners were prepared to keep using the economic tools to prevent trade that threatens their security.
Daleep Singh, the US deputy national security adviser for international economics, said the primary causes for the growing relationship between the world’s two biggest non-Western powers were “Russia’s decision to invade and terrorise Ukraine and China’s choice to enable [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war”.
Western sanctions in response to the war have blocked Russia’s access to global pools of capital and cutting-edge technology, said Singh, a key architect of the sanctions, in remarks at Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution.
“Now it is utterly reliant on China, giving Beijing enormous leverage over Russia’s ability to project power and to exert influence,” he said of the Kremlin, adding that most of its imported semiconductors and microelectronics last year were shipped via China.
Singh’s remarks came a month after US President Joe Biden signed a bill into law to give billions of dollars of new aid to Ukraine for its war with Russia, a rare bipartisan victory after Republicans in Congress blocked military help for Kyiv for months.
The Biden administration has designated more than 4,000 entities and individuals under Russia-related sanctions authorities as of February, according to the US Treasury.
“Treasury’s actions, alongside those of its partners across the globe, are restricting Russia’s ability to generate the revenue it needs to fund its war and disrupting the Kremlin’s efforts to build a wartime economy,” the department said when it announced a new wave of sanctions on the eve of the war’s second anniversary.
Earlier this month, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping reaffirmed their partnership during a meeting in Beijing. Xi said he and Putin agreed that “a political settlement of the Ukraine crisis is the correct direction”.
It was Putin’s second trip to China since the two leaders declared in 2022 that their countries had a “no-limits” partnership – an assertion made just before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
In Washington on Tuesday, Singh cited global trade data in arguing “it may be a partnership without limits – only time will tell – but it is increasingly without symmetry”.
China accounted for more than half of Russia’s imports and more than one-third of its exports last year, he said, while Russia made up 3 per cent of China’s exports and 5 per cent of its imports.
“While China-Russia trade has increased, China is well aware that its combined goods trade with the US and the EU was almost seven times larger than that with Russia in 2023,” said Singh of the growing risks and costs to Beijing.
“To be clear, we have no desire to disrupt all trade between Russia and China. But we and our partners are prepared to use our sanctions and our export controls to prevent the trade of goods and technologies that threaten our collective security.”
Sino-Russian trade had declined since Biden expanded Treasury’s ability to target financial institutions facilitating Russia’s war, he added, noting that these capabilities may expand further.
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