... and many others received it in large volumes. After the end of the Cold War, the “black knights” seemed to have faded into the shadows. Not a single power directly challenged the United States and did not seek at all costs to help countries under sanctions. China carefully built economic relations with the DPRK, Venezuela and Iran, but kept in line with UN Security Council resolutions, avoiding confrontational steps. Russia began to return to the role of the “black knight” only in the mid-2010s. The ...
... Russia to arrange payments in alternative currencies to the dollar and the euro. The Chinese yuan has become the most sought-after option. The main reason is the volume of the Chinese market and the high density of Russian-Chinese trade. In addition, China itself is increasingly the target of US sanctions. In recent years, Beijing has been energetically pursuing technological independence from foreign countries. Sanctions on major Chinese telecommunications companies are only fuelling China's efforts. The creation of channels of financial and ...
... sanctions so require. They can also be given out as rewards for “behavior change”. Ultimately, in the modern doctrine of sanctions policy, “behavioral change” is one of the main goals. Accordingly, Russia can either continue to rely on “jarligs” ... ... large margin of safety. However, the resistance of major players like Russia may gradually undermine their dominance. Involving China in the process will pose an even more serious challenge to the “soft empires”. China’s policy will be extremely cautious,...
... conflict. If the “driving a wedge” policy involved separating China from Russia by tempting the latter, now the US uses direct pressure and threats. Washington attempts to force Beijing to join the anti-Russian side and join the US and the EU’s sanctions against Russia.
Relations with the United States are of great political, economic and security importance to China. At the same time, Washington views Beijing as its main competitor. There are already many problems in their bilateral relations; China wants to develop its China–Russia relations, but also wants to avoid deteriorating its relations with the US....
... “preferential trade regime with ASEAN” was emphasized by EEC Minister Sergei Glazyev back in 2021 (EEC News, 2021).
The EAEU countries obviously fear to lose competitiveness if they open up to the enormous Chinese market, but in the current situation China, too, will be extremely careful not to fall under secondary sanctions.
Until 2022, in relation to Central Asia in general and the EAEU countries in particular, Russia could afford to act more on the strength of its geopolitical vision of the situation, “wishing to isolate itself from it [Central Asia – Ed....
The decline of the Russian economy is not beneficial to China
The large-scale sanctions that have been slapped on Russia by the “collective West” naturally raised the question of its deepening and expanding economic relations with China. According to a number of parameters, Russia has no alternatives to cooperation with the ...
As eight years ago, in the wake of the “post-Crimea” wave of sanctions, China’s principal calculation is that Russia would supposedly offer “special and privileged” terms of operation to Chinese business
On 20 March 2022, Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui
said
that Chinese business in Russia should “seize ...
... there should be no doubt, that Beijing has been deeply involved and consulted in Moscow’s planning of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. This level of coordination gives Kremlin the justified confidence that “the World is big” and no sanctions can tip Russia. We already see the contours of the West deeply humiliated and Russia succeeding with it objectives in Ukraine. Like Russia in Europe, China has during the past decades built up the necessary power to act in East Asia, and the decision to resolve the Taiwan issue in a very foreseeable future is undoubtedly already made in Beijing. That will deal the final devastating blow to the fiction ...
... little appetite for shielding Moscow from its consequences, e.g. by undermining a threatened Western sanctions regime. Here, too, both sides may share a long-term interest in reducing their dependence on a U.S.-centric financial system, but at present, China’s greater trade links with the U.S. and EU make it acutely
vulnerable
to secondary sanctions. Even in Russia, commentators have been skeptical if Chinese companies would be willing to incur such risks,
citing
their past compliance with U.S. regimes.
China’s support for Russia’s policy towards Ukraine might also jeopardize its own ...
... against the financial director of the company, Meng Wanzhou, who was under house arrest in Canada. The Chinese side released two previously detained
Canadian citizens.
The good news for China ends there. All previously established legal mechanisms for sanctions against China continue to operate. A lot of them had appeared under Trump. They include the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, legislation on the rights of ethnic minorities in the PRC, and trade restriction regimes against big Chinese companies that are, according to the ...
