Communist China, in Parley With Blinken, Is Resisting American Pleas To Give Up Support of Russia

Communist China is resisting if not ignoring American pleas to give up Beijing’s unwavering support of Moscow as seen in exports laden with American technology that Russia needs while at war in Ukraine.That was evident as Secretary Blinken came out of a five-hour confab in Beijing with his opposite number, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, in which they danced around critical issues without agreeing on a thing.The most serious charge that Mr. Blinken made was to express concern about China’s “support to Russia’s defense industrial base that is enabling Russia to prosecute its war against Ukraine and undermining European and transatlantic security.”Mr. Wang evinced no sign of responding to this claim, urging Washington “not to interfere in China’s internal affairs, not to hold China’s development back, and not to step on China’s red lines on China’s sovereignty, security and development interests.’Nor was there any clue that China was moved by Mr. Blinken’s vague warning, as relayed by a State Department spokesman, Mathew Miller, that Washington would “take necessary actions” to keep “advanced U.S. technologies from being used to undermine our national security and economy.”The good news from Mr. Blinken’s mission – his second to China in ten months – is that President Xi was in a mood to talk nicely despite yielding nothing. “I proposed mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation to be the three overarching principles,” China’s Xinhua news agency quoted Mr. Xi as saying after he received Mr. Blinken for a conversation bereft of overt threats from either side.Mr. Blinken, focusing on China’s support of Russia in critical industries and projects, may not have touched at all on such specific issues as China ordering Apple to shut down WhatsApp for Chinese buyers.It was after President Biden’s emphatic warning to Mr. Xi, in a telephone conversation on April 2, to stop giving away American technology in products exported to Russia that China ordered the removal of WhatsApp and Threads from its App store purportedly for security reasons.Apple denied WhatsApp had spread material critical of Mr. Xi or his regime but promptly complied, saying it had to “follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree.”Tit for tat may also have been on display since the Chinese obviously were not happy about the provision in the foreign aid bill calling for its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell out within a year. Florida’s Republican senator, Marco Rubio, said it was “a good move for America” after letting the Chinese Communist Party “control one of the most popular apps in America.”There was no sign, however, Mr. Blinken got down to specifics while raising issues that Mr. Wang would prefer to ignore. Among them: “freedom of navigation in the South China Sea,” which China claims as its own; “the need to prevent an escalation of the crisis in the Middle East” where China ranks as the biggest market for Iranian oil; and “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” where China supports North Korea and overlooks UN sanctions.China’s ties to Russia, though, remain America’s paramount concern. “China continues to thread the needle on Russia,” a Georgetown professor, Evan Medeiros, writes in Foreign Affairs. “It is boosting Russia’s military capabilities with dual-use exports and helping to prop up its economy while avoiding large-scale U.S. sanctions.”Mr. Medeiros, with the National Security Council in the Obama administration, anticipated exactly what happened during Mr. Blinken’s China mission.“So far, Xi has made only tactical adjustments.,” he concludes, “a tried and tested” way for the Chinese “to justify policy moves without being distracted from long-term goals.”

Communist China, in Parley With Blinken, Is Resisting American Pleas To Give Up Support of Russia

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