Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands during a meeting in Beijing on October 18, 2023.
Sergei Guneyev | Afp | Getty Images
Munich, GERMANY — The U.S. is considering slapping sanctions on Chinese companies it believes are helping Russia fuel its war in Ukraine, members of Congress told CNBC, marking the first direct apportioning of blame toward Beijing since the start of the war.
Democratic Senator Gerald Connolly, member of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Relations, on Saturday said that lawmakers were already considering such plans after similar measures were proposed last week by the European Union.
The provisions would mark the first direct penalties against Beijing despite long-held Western suspicions over its support for Russia’s military operations.
“China has to understand that the same kinds of sanctions which are beginning to really take hold in Russia and are affecting Russian productivity, economic performance and quality of life, can also be applied to China,” he told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference.
“And frankly, China has a lot more to lose than Russia.”
U.S. sanctions could severely hurt a Chinese economy already in the doldrums, after a slower-than-anticipated Covid-19 recovery and turbulence in its real estate sector. But such a step could also hurt the U.S., given the countries’ trade interdependence, and this consideration has prompted caution from Washington in the past.
Still, Connolly said that would not deter such penalties, which could come “very soon.”
“My hope is the very threat of it — and the fact that the Europeans are really serious about this, which is a relatively recent development — ought to clarify some thinking in Beijing, I hope,” he said.
“If broad sanctions were applied to China, it would really hit home. And their economic performance right now is already weak. So I would hope China would calculate carefully that there are consequences around the…
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