US Ambassador Nicholas Burns says China is aligned with ‘proxies of insurrection’

U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said the Biden administration is making a last-ditch effort to persuade China to stop transferring equipment to Russia for use in the Ukraine war.

In an interview at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Burns claimed that nearly 400 Chinese companies have provided Russia with so-called dual-use products, which have both military and commercial uses. He also said that 90% of the microelectronic products used in Russia’s war were provided by China.

With less than two weeks until President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, Burns laid out the administration’s views on Russia and China’s alliance with Iran and North Korea in a series of meetings with Chinese ministers this week. worry. He will leave the country next Tuesday.

More broadly, Burns said, China’s policies toward Russia, Iran and North Korea are inconsistent with Beijing’s desire to play a leading role in international initiatives on the global order, such as the World Trade Organization and the Paris climate change agreement.

“Their actions are destructive because they are aligning themselves with the most unreliable agents of chaos in the international system,” he said. “So the Chinese can’t have their cake and eat it too; they have to make a decision here.

He also said China, which buys large amounts of oil from Iran, should use its influence to insist that Iran prevent Tehran-backed Houthi militias from attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Burns this week met with senior officials including Ma Zhaoxu, executive vice minister of foreign affairs, and Liu Jianchao, China’s international affairs minister and expected to be the next foreign minister. He has more meetings next week.

There was no immediate response from China’s Foreign Ministry. But in recent press conferences, Chinese officials denied supplying any dual-use products, such as military drones, to Russia or Ukraine.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said in December: “China never provides weapons to parties to conflicts and strictly controls the export of dual-use items. The scope and measures of China’s export control of drones are the strictest in the world.” 17.

Chinese officials also said that while Western countries have imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil sales over its nuclear weapons development program, the United Nations has not yet done so. Therefore, China does not feel it has a legal obligation to avoid buying Iranian oil, which sells at a deep discount to world prices, as other countries shy away from buying it.

Kpler, a Vienna-based company that tracks Iranian oil shipments, said China has quadrupled its imports of Iranian oil in the past two years since brokering a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and last year purchased 90% of Iran’s oil exports. above. . The oil sold by Iran’s state-owned oil sector to China accounts for more than 5% of Iran’s entire economy and pays for most of the Iranian government’s operations.

Iran has suffered a series of setbacks, including Israeli air strikes on Tehran’s air defenses and Israel’s defeat of Hezbollah, Iran’s main ally in Lebanon. In response, China sent Zhang Guoqing, one of its four vice-premiers, to meet with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran last month.

“China supports Iran in safeguarding national sovereignty, security, territorial integrity and legitimate rights and interests,” Zhang Jun said in Tehran.

The Biden administration is expected to expand a blacklist of tankers carrying Russian or Iranian oil, and China may ban the ships from entering its ports, Kpler senior analyst Andon Pavlov said on Thursday. Reuters reported this week that officials in Shandong province, the main entry point for Iranian oil into China, had begun banning blacklisted tankers from entering ports.

But Pavlov said the way Iran ships oil to China is so opaque that it is difficult to predict the effectiveness of these measures.

Burns’ discussions with senior Chinese officials this week and next are part of a broader recent diplomatic effort by the Biden administration. In November, President Biden met with China’s top leader Xi Jinping at a conference in Peru, and in August, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Xi in Beijing.

While Burns declined to predict the Trump administration’s likely policies toward China, he said communication between the two countries’ militaries to prevent unexpected confrontations has improved. In October last year, China allowed the retrieval of the remains of U.S. military personnel missing in action during World War II for the first time in 13 years.

He also praised China’s recent moves to restrict exports of chemicals used to make fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has been the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States. Burns said that China has arrested 300 people working in the fentanyl industry, closed many online stores selling precursor chemicals used to produce fentanyl, and banned the export of 55 precursor chemicals and synthetic poison.

Li You Contributed research.