Ukraine war: senior US official sharpens threat of sanctions if China helps Russia

 

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, in Brussels, reiterates US warning that China, which refuses to condemn Moscow, could face consequences

 

Sherman frames the US frustration with China in terms of a larger rivalry: ‘Beijing is seeking to undermine the very system that they benefited from’

 

Finbarr Bermingham

 

“They have seen what we have done in terms of sanctions, export controls, designations vis-a-vis Russia, so it should give them some idea of the menu from which we could choose,” US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said in Brussels on Thursday. Photo: Reuters

 

“They have seen what we have done in terms of sanctions, export controls, designations vis-a-vis Russia, so it should give them some idea of the menu from which we could choose,” US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said in Brussels on Thursday. Photo: Reuters

 

The No 2 US diplomat came to Europe this week to reiterate a barbed threat to China over its stance on Russia’s war on Ukraine: provide material support to Moscow, and face sweeping sanctions and export controls.

 

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman issued the warning during a lengthy broadside against Beijing in Brussels on Thursday, in which she also condemned China’s human rights record, its alleged economic bullying of Lithuania and European companies like H&M, and charges of economic foul play, including the theft of trade secrets and intellectual property.

 

Residential buildings heavily damaged by Russian shelling in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters

 

Residential buildings heavily damaged by Russian shelling in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters

 

Speaking to European lawmakers, press and students, Sherman said that she and other senior US officials had repeatedly explained the US position on sanctions to their Chinese counterparts.

 

“President [Joe] Biden has spoken to Xi Jinping directly; Jake Sullivan, our national security adviser, to [China’s top diplomat] Yang Jiechi; Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken to Foreign Minister Wang Yi; I myself have spoken to more than one [official] in the PRC,” Sherman said.

 

“And we’ve been very direct that they have seen what we have done in terms of sanctions, export controls, designations vis-à-vis Russia, so it should give them some idea of the menu from which we could choose if, indeed, China were to provide material support,” she added.

 

China’s already doing things that do not help this situation

 

Wendy Sherman, US Deputy Secretary of State

 

Sherman’s remarks were the latest in a series by senior US officials warning that Washington will not hold back from punishing Beijing if it is found to be assisting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war effort.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, CIA Director Nicholas Burns – and Sherman herself – have warned in recent weeks that China will face significant costs should it provide such assistance, in a sharp shift in tone from Washington.

 

Sherman accused Beijing of “parroting the Kremlin’s disinformation”, including claims that the US was producing bioweaponry in Ukraine; and of having “repeatedly drawn false equivalencies between Russia’s war of aggression and Ukraine’s self-defensive actions”.

 

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“Let’s be clear, China’s already doing things that do not help this situation,” Sherman said.

 

By spelling out the consequences to Chinese leaders, Sherman implied that the US was trying to avoid a dramatic escalation that could see superpower frictions spiral out of control.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on February 4, when the leaders declared the cooperation between their nations had “no limits”. Photo: AP

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on February 4, when the leaders declared the cooperation between their nations had “no limits”. Photo: AP

 

“We don’t want to start another cold war, we don’t want conflict, we don’t want miscalculation. We want channels of communication,” Sherman said.

 

“We hope there are areas where there can be cooperation, but make no mistake, I believe that President Xi Jinping has made a decision about what he wants the PRC to be in the world. And it’s a very different vision than we have in this room.”

 

Sherman framed the US-China rivalry in stark terms.

 

“Do we want to have governments that are transparent and accountable to their people, or governments that exist to consolidate their own power and control their people in turn?” she asked.

 

“Beijing is seeking to undermine the very system that they benefited from to return instead to a system where might makes right and big nations can coerce smaller countries into acting against their own interests.”

 

China-EU trade ties ‘hard to break’ despite discord over Ukraine war

 

Sherman declined to condemn India, which has also failed to criticise the Russian invasion, saying that the US would “support them as a growing and important and consequential democracy”.

 

“They’re a young democracy and they are very worried about the PRC. They understand that the future of their military, which was built on Russian weapons, probably doesn’t have a future with Russian weapons anymore because our sanctions have pulled back the military industrial complex of Russia, and it’s not coming back anytime soon.”

 

Sherman sandwiched her speech between two days of talks with senior EU figures over a transatlantic China policy, during which the US delegation is expected to push Europe to take a more combative stance towards Beijing.

 

Images of civilian deaths in Bucha ‘very disturbing’, says China’s envoy to the UN

01:40

 

Images of civilian deaths in Bucha ‘very disturbing’, says China’s envoy to the UN

 

Images of civilian deaths in Bucha ‘very disturbing’, says China’s envoy to the UN

 

Brussels is seething from an EU-China summit on April 1 that has subsequently been described as a “dialogue of the deaf” by the bloc’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, who complained that Chinese leaders did not want to discuss Ukraine.

 

There is mounting frustration in the EU at China’s intransigence on numerous issues, led by immediate concerns over its cosiness with Russia. Both the US and EU see their positioning on China narrowing in this light, even if they are still some distance apart on what action they would take.

 

During recent meetings between senior US officials and some European counterparts, Washington tried to frame the idea of sanctioning China as a matter of “when” rather than “if”, sources said – a suggestion from which Europeans recoiled.

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EU-China summit was a ‘dialogue of the deaf’, says top Brussels diplomat Sherman intimated that the EU is not yet on the same page on how exactly to deal with the perceived China threat.

 

“The United States uses secondary sanctions, you know that. We have said to countries who are evading the sanctions that they’re going to pay a price. Europe has not been a great fan of secondary sanctions,” she acknowledged.

 

The South China Morning Post reported this month that the US has already begun modelling whether the mammoth sanctions on Russia would be usable on China during some future crisis – for example, if it invaded Taiwan.

 

These plans have been raised with European counterparts, the Post understands, who did not commit to joining.