A new front was added to the inter-power conflict in recent weeks, when the United States warned Beijing of the consequences of selling Chinese-produced arms to Russia. There is almost no international forum where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken missed the opportunity to issue the warning in public. The background to the US fear of China's aid to Russia lies in Putin's visit to China in early February 2022, three weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During the visit, he and his host Xi Jinping issued an ideological platform for broad cooperation that calls for a change in the world order, and agreed on a partnership without borders.
The Chinese balloon that the US intercepted in its airspace caused the postponement of Blinken's visit to China, but in order to defuse the tensions, the two countries agreed that Blinken and Wang Yi, who was China's foreign minister until recently and was promoted to a member of the State Council, would meet on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
At the meeting (February 18), which only increased the tensions, Blinken raised the issue of arms sales and said, "Based on information that China intends to supply lethal equipment to Russia in its war effort in Ukraine, we explicitly warned China of the consequences and results of providing such assistance." Blinken explained that among the steps his country would take if indeed China supplied lethal weapons, there would be sanctions on companies and people involved. Blinken even claimed that China cannot, on the one hand, take initiatives to end the war, and on the other hand, provide the weapons that will allow Russia to continue its war in Ukraine.
China reacted angrily to these accusations and presumably also to the public campaign that the US is conducting against it on this and other issues. It charged that the US did not provide evidence of its accusations, and that it is the one complicating the war in Ukraine when it supplies large quantities of weapons to Ukraine. Now we have to wait and see if China has indeed considered supplying Russia with offensive weapons and to what extent the publicity of the rebuke-warning by the US will spur it to react defiantly and ignore the American request.
A new front was added to the inter-power conflict in recent weeks, when the United States warned Beijing of the consequences of selling Chinese-produced arms to Russia. There is almost no international forum where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken missed the opportunity to issue the warning in public. The background to the US fear of China's aid to Russia lies in Putin's visit to China in early February 2022, three weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During the visit, he and his host Xi Jinping issued an ideological platform for broad cooperation that calls for a change in the world order, and agreed on a partnership without borders.
The Chinese balloon that the US intercepted in its airspace caused the postponement of Blinken's visit to China, but in order to defuse the tensions, the two countries agreed that Blinken and Wang Yi, who was China's foreign minister until recently and was promoted to a member of the State Council, would meet on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
At the meeting (February 18), which only increased the tensions, Blinken raised the issue of arms sales and said, "Based on information that China intends to supply lethal equipment to Russia in its war effort in Ukraine, we explicitly warned China of the consequences and results of providing such assistance." Blinken explained that among the steps his country would take if indeed China supplied lethal weapons, there would be sanctions on companies and people involved. Blinken even claimed that China cannot, on the one hand, take initiatives to end the war, and on the other hand, provide the weapons that will allow Russia to continue its war in Ukraine.
China reacted angrily to these accusations and presumably also to the public campaign that the US is conducting against it on this and other issues. It charged that the US did not provide evidence of its accusations, and that it is the one complicating the war in Ukraine when it supplies large quantities of weapons to Ukraine. Now we have to wait and see if China has indeed considered supplying Russia with offensive weapons and to what extent the publicity of the rebuke-warning by the US will spur it to react defiantly and ignore the American request.