China is ‘aiding and abetting the Russian war machine,’ says US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns

[MNZGamerX]

By John Cookson



“We’ve got to be careful about how we handle this relationship,” US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said on Thursday about US-China relations. “We’re systemic rivals,” he continued, “And I think we’ll be systemic rivals well into the next decade, perhaps even beyond.”

Burns joined the Transatlantic Forum on GeoEconomics in New York virtually from Beijing for a keynote address and discussion with Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center Senior Director Josh Lipsky. The ambassador opened his remarks with “good news” and “bad news” about the US-China relationship today.

The good news, he said, is that the US-China relationship has stabilized over the past year, especially after US President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in California in November 2023. Since then, both sides have worked to reopen and strengthen military-to-military and other cabinet-level channels as well as slow the flow of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl.

But the other side of the coin, Burns continued, is that the US-China relationship remains “extremely competitive” and will be for the foreseeable future. This competition plays out in the security realm, along with US allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, but also—and increasingly—on issues of technology and economics. Here are more highlights from the conversation.

‘We’re not going to tolerate a second China shock’​

• “I think both technology and economics have really taken center stage in the US-China relationship,” Burns said. In part, this is because the Chinese economy is in the midst of a structural transition. Amid cooling in China’s property and infrastructure sectors, China is working to keep up growth by manufacturing more—two-to-three times domestic demand in some cases, Burns said.
• With more goods than the domestic market could possibly absorb, China is now “trying to dump those products at artificially low prices in markets around the world,” Burns said. The less expensive goods undercut manufacturers in other countries. This is most apparent now with electric vehicles (EVs), lithium batteries, and solar panels, but it could soon extend to biotechnology and robotics. “What the Chinese are engaged in is patently unfair under international trade,” the ambassador said.
• “We are not going to tolerate a second China shock,” Burns said, noting that “well over one million American manufacturing jobs” were lost in the first China shock in the 2000s.
• In this case, the United States is pushing back with 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs, along with other measures, and it is not alone. “I think many other countries are reacting the same way against this overcapacity problem of the People’s Republic of China,” Burns said, noting the “spirited debate” in the European Union and new tariffs against Chinese exports by South Africa, Turkey, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, and Canada.
• “If there’s one lesson, I think that all of us around the world in every single country learned from the pandemic,” Burns said, it is “don’t be reliant on a single source for critical materials, critical minerals, [and] critical supplies that you need for your own economy.”

China is not backing away from its ‘no limits’ partnership with Russia​

• Responding to comments by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the Atlantic Council’s Global Future Forum about the close ties between China and Russia, Burns said that there is “no indication that China is going to back away from its ‘no limits’ partnership with Russia.”
• “The Chinese like to say that they’re neutral” in Russia’s war against Ukraine, Burns said. But the evidence does not support this. Instead, China is “aiding and abetting the Russian war machine,” the ambassador explained.
• Beijing continues to give political and diplomatic support to Moscow, including at the United Nations Security Council, Burns said. And while the United States does not currently believe that China is providing Russia with lethal military assistance—as in “complete weapon systems,” he clarified—Beijing is sending badly needed components to Russia that the Kremlin relies on for its ongoing war effort.
• Chinese components and technologies are so important to Russia, Burns said, that “a lot of people think that the Russian defense industrial base now is stronger than it was even at the beginning of the war in large part because of the assistance they have from China.”

The military risks of artificial intelligence​

• So, where does the US-China relationship go from here? One area to watch is artificial intelligence (AI), which Burns said both sides are “beginning to grapple with.”
• With AI, as well as with biotechnology and quantum computing, the technology is developing in the military sphere and in the commercial marketplace, he explained, and this creates both opportunities and risks.
• Washington and Beijing are at “a very early stage” in conversations on AI, Burns said. But he noted that “more sophisticated, deeper” discussions are needed. “We would like to have an in-depth discussion, particularly to address the risks associated with AI in the military sphere,” the ambassador said. “We hope the Chinese will be ready to meet us to have that dialogue.”
• At the same time, Burns said, it is also important for the United States to work with like-minded democratic countries on AI and other technologies.

 

[Yommie]

No surprise there. China will do what is in its own interest and that is to hurt America with Ukraine war.