China supplying Russia with cruise missile, drone and tank parts, warns US

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping meet in Beijing in October 2023 – Reuters

China is providing Moscow with cruise missile, drone and tank parts, fuelling the biggest Russian military expansion since Soviet times, the US has warned.

US defence officials warned that China is propping up Russia’s defence industrial base, funnelling weapons technology towards the war in Ukraine.

Joe Biden, the US president, raised concerns directly with Xi Jinping on April 2, warning the premier that the United States was unhappy with China’s huge support for the Russian military.

On Friday, a Biden administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, accused China of helping Moscow to meet its “most ambitious defence expansion since the Soviet era and on a faster timeline than we believed possible early on in this conflict”.

The US official told Reuters: “Our view is that one of the most game-changing moves available to us at this time to support Ukraine is to persuade the PRC [China] to stop helping Russia reconstitute its military industrial base.”

The official added: “Russia would struggle to sustain its war effort without PRC input.”

China is accused of supplying Russia with machine tools to increase its ballistic missile production, which has allowed Vladimir Putin’s forces to outgun Ukraine on the battlefield.

Working jointly on drones

Beijing is also thought to have provided Russia with drone engines, cruise-missile turbojet engines and nitrocellulose, a chemical compound used to make propellants for weapons.

US intelligence suggests Chinese and Russian companies have worked jointly to produce drones inside Russia, while Chinese companies have worked to improve Russia’s satellite and space-based capabilities and supplied satellite imagery for military purposes.

The US said that five Chinese companies were providing optical components for use in Russian tanks and armoured vehicles. They are Wuhan Global Sensor Technology Co; Wuhan Tongsheng Technology Co Ltd; Hikvision; iRay Technology; and the North China Research Institute of Electro-Optics.

Overall, the officials claimed, about 90 per cent of Russia’s microelectronics used to make missiles, tanks and aircraft came from China, alongside 70 per cent of Russia’s approximately $900 million in machine tools that had been imported in the last quarter of 2023.

Janet Yellen, US treasury secretary, told Chinese officials on a visit to Beijing this week “that companies, including those in the PRC, must not provide material support for Russia’s war, and that they will face significant consequences if they do”.

Trade between China and Russia reached a record $240 billion in 2023, according to Bloomberg, as supplies of goods and materials from the West have been choked off by Western sanctions. At the same time, Russia has boosted exports of coal and oil to China.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, is reported to have briefed European allies this week on the scope and significance of China’s support. He is expected to travel to China later this month for talks in his second trip in less than a year.

‘Prudent and responsible’

Qin Gang, China’s top foreign minister, said in April last year that it would not sell weapons to either side, saying it had adopted “a prudent and responsible attitude”, and that China would also regulate the export of items with dual civilian and military use “in accordance with laws and regulations”.

That came after Mr Blinken said the US had intelligence suggesting China was considering providing arms and ammunition to Russia – and warned that such involvement in the Kremlin’s war effort would be a “serious problem.”

Separately, China has announced rare sanctions against two US arms makers, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems, over what Beijing called their support for arms sales to Taiwan.

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