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Blinken heads to China next week with Russia on the agenda
Insights from Financial Times, El País, and the South China Morning Post
The News
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China next week to meet with senior officials, seeking to discuss concerns over Beijing’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Blinken is set to leave on April 23 for the four-day trip, Politico reported. It comes at a time of heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington, especially around trade.
A State Department spokesperson said the Secretary of State would raise U.S. concerns that Beijing is keeping Russia’s war effort alive by providing it with key dual-use technology — items such as lasers and radars that have both civilian and military applications.
“When it comes to Russia’s defense industrial base, the primary contributor in this moment to that is China,” Blinken told reporters after a G7 ministers meeting on Friday.
SIGNALS
US concerns grow about Chinese support for Kremlin
Blinken’s visit comes as U.S. officials strongly condemn China’s support for Russia and its campaign of aggression in Ukraine. While China has long insisted that it does not provide military equipment to Russia, U.S. officials have said Beijing has issued the Kremlin machine tools, drone and cruise missile engines, and microelectronics, as well as key components used to produce munitions, U.S. officials told CNN. “Russia would struggle to sustain its war effort without PRC inputs,” one U.S. official told France24, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China. American officials have been pushing European allies to use diplomatic efforts and economic tools in an effort to dissuade Beijing from continuing to supply key materiel, the Financial Times reported.
Biden’s steel tariff plan may put a damper on meetings
The U.S. government is seeking new measures to tackle China’s rising exports of electric vehicles, solar panels, and steel amid massive overcapacity in China’s vast industrial sector that is hurting industries worldwide. President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a tripling of tariffs on Chinese aluminum and steel, saying that China “ends up dumping extra steel on the global markets at unfairly low prices.” The tariff announcement would “affect but not derail” Blinken’s trip, a professor at East China Normal University told the South China Morning Post. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen indicated last week that the U.S. had not ruled out taking further measures to insulate American electric vehicle companies from cheap Chinese exports. Beijing has pushed back, with Chinese officials pointing out the U.S. also subsidizes its domestic clean-energy industry, that global demand for EVs remains high, and that tariffs on clean energy technology would likely impede the climate transition, The Wall Street Journal reported.
