UR. Nicholas Burns, US Ambassador, Says China Is Collaborating With 'Agents of Disruption'

The American Ambassador to China, R. Nicholas Burns, said the Biden administration is making a last-ditch effort to try to persuade China to stop transferring equipment to Russia for the war in Ukraine.

Mr. Burns, in an interview at the US embassy in Beijing, asserted that about 400 Chinese companies have provided Russia with so-called dual-use products, those with military and commercial applications. He also said that China provided 90 percent of the microelectronics used in the Russian military effort.

With less than two weeks to go before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office, Mr. Burns is raising the administration's concerns about Russia, as well as China's ties to Iran and North Korea, with Chinese ministers in a series of meetings this week and early next week. He turns his back on this next Tuesday.

Broadly speaking, Mr. Burns said that China's policies towards Russia, Iran and North Korea are not compatible with Beijing's desire to play a leading role in international systems of global order, such as the World Trade Organization and the Paris Agreement on climate change.

“Their actions are disturbing because they associate themselves with dishonest agents of disruption in the international system,” he said. So the Chinese cannot have it both ways; they have to make a decision here.”

He also said that China, which buys large amounts of oil from Iran, should use its influence to insist that Iran stop the Houthi forces supported by Tehran from attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea.

Mr Burns met this week with senior officials including Ma Zhaoxu, the deputy foreign minister, and Liu Jianchao, who heads the international department of the Chinese Communist Party and is expected to become the next foreign minister. He has other meetings next week.

China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond. But in a recent press conference, Chinese officials denied supplying Russia or Ukraine with any dual-use products, such as military drones.

“China never provides weapons to conflicting parties and strictly controls the export of dual-use documents, and China's scope and measures to control the export of drones are the most stringent in the world,” said Lin Jian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in December. .

Chinese officials also decided that although Western countries have imposed sanctions on Iran's oil exports because of its nuclear weapons development program, the United Nations has not. So China felt no legal obligation to avoid buying Iranian oil, which sells at a steep discount to world prices because other countries avoid it.

China has quadrupled its imports of Iranian oil in the nearly two years since the Iran-Saudi Arabia peace deal, and last year it bought more than 90 percent of Iran's oil exports, according to Kpler, a Vienna-based firm that specializes in tracking oil exports. Iran. . Oil sales to China through Iran's state-owned oil sector represent more than five percent of Iran's total economy, and pay for most of Iran's government operations.

Iran has faced a series of setbacks, including Israeli air strikes against Tehran's airspace and defeat by Israel's closest ally of Iran in Lebanon, Hezbollah. China responded by sending one of its four deputies, Zhang Guoqing, to meet with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran last month.

“China supports Iran in protecting its national sovereignty, security, territorial integrity and its legitimate rights and interests,” Mr. Zhang in Tehran.

Andon Pavlov, a senior analyst at Kpler, said Thursday that the Biden administration is expected to expand its list of tankers carrying Russian or Iranian oil, and that China may block these vessels from its ports. Reuters reported this week that officials in Shandong province, China's main entry point for Iranian oil, have begun blocking unregistered tankers from their ports.

But Mr Pavlov said Iran's means of exporting oil to China were so unclear that it was difficult to predict the effectiveness of such measures.

The interviews of Mr. Burns and senior Chinese officials this week and beyond are part of the latest broader diplomatic effort by the Biden administration. In November, President Biden met with Xi Jinping, the supreme leader of China, at a summit in Peru, and in August, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, met with Mr. Xi in Beijing.

While Mr. Burns declined to predict the possibility of the Trump administration's policies toward China, he said that communications between the two countries' militaries to prevent accidental conflict have improved. And last October, for the first time in 13 years, China allowed the recovery of the remains of American World War II soldiers who were off duty.

He also praised China's recent actions to limit the sale of chemicals used to make fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has been a leading cause of drug-related deaths in the United States. China has arrested 300 people in the fentanyl industry, shut down many online stores that sell precursor chemicals for the production of fentanyl, and banned the export of 55 chemicals and synthetic drugs, Mr. Burns said.

It's You research contributed.