revitalising Russia\u2019s defense industrial base<\/a>, \u201cwhich had otherwise suffered significant setbacks\u201d since Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, a senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n\u201cRussia is undertaking its most ambitious defense expansion since the Soviet era and on a faster timeline than we believed possible early on in this conflict,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur view is that one of the most gamechanging moves available to us at this time to support Ukraine is to persuade the PRC [People\u2019s Republic of China] to stop helping Russia reconstitute its military industrial base,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia would struggle to sustain its war effort without PRC inputs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
US officials said that China provided more than 70% of the $900m (\u00a3723m) in machine tools \u2013 probably used to build ballistic missiles \u2013 imported in the last quarter of 2023 by Russia.<\/p>\n
They also said that 90% of Russia\u2019s microelectronics imports \u2013 used to produce missiles, tanks and aircraft \u2013 came from China last year.<\/p>\n
The US has repeatedly warned China against supporting Russia and both Chinese and US officials say Beijing has stopped short of directly providing weapons to Russia, which has turned to heavily sanctioned North Korea and Iran to replenish its arms supply.<\/p>\n
US officials believe that China, anxious after its Russian allies\u2019 early setbacks on the battlefield, has instead focused on sending material that ostensibly has non-military uses.<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden\u2019s administration is hoping that European powers can make the difference with China, which is facing economic headwinds and is sensitive about trade pressure.<\/p>\n
The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is expected to make the case on China\u2019s ties with Russia as he meets top diplomats of other industrial democracies at the G7 talks in Capri, Italy.<\/p>\n
Blinken is also planning a visit in the coming weeks to China, on the heels of a trip by the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen.<\/p>\n
The administration hopes that such dialogue, including a recent telephone call between Biden and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, can help contain tensions between the world\u2019s two largest economies but US officials have stressed they will still press on concerns.<\/p>\n
Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China is helping Russia undertake its biggest military expansion in decades<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":283013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=285426"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285429,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285426\/revisions\/285429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/283013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=285426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=285426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=285426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}