U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised concerns on Friday about China’s support for Russia’s military, one of the many issues threatening to sour the recent improvement in relations between the world’s biggest economies.
Blinken raised the matter during five-and-a-half hours of talks with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing, the latest high-level contact between the countries after a year filled with mostly acrimony between the two superpowers.
“I reiterated our serious concern about the PRC providing components that are powering Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine,” Blinken said at a news conference at the end of his visit on Friday, using China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.
“China is the top supplier of machine tools, microelectronics, nitrocellulose — which is critical to making munitions and rocket propellants — and other dual-use items that Moscow is using to ramp up its defence industrial base,” he said.
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