US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Beijing on Friday that Chinese firms sending equipment to help Russia’s war effort in Ukraine will face punishment for their actions.
Yellen said that the US has seen evidence of Chinese assistance and had urged Beijing to crack down.
She said she raised the issue during two days of meetings with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, expressing concern that equipment “helpful to Russia’s military” was evading sanctions and getting to Moscow to aid its war against Ukraine.
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“I stressed that companies must not provide material support to Russia’s defence industrial sector and that they will face significant consequences if they do,” Yellen told reporters at a news conference in San Francisco.
“We are determined to do all that we can to stem this flow of material that aids Russia in conducting this brutal and illegal war,” Yellen said, warning that any companies aiding Moscow’s war effort could face sanctions.
She said the US government had already imposed sanctions against a number of private firms, including some in China, that were helping Russia get equipment, along with some financial institutions that could be aiding that effort.
“We would like to see China crack down on this, especially when we’re able to provide information,” she said. She gave no further details on the names of the companies involved or He’s reaction.
Yellen stressed the Chinese firms in question were private and said she was not suggesting that this was occurring with knowledge of the Chinese government.
Climate change, debt distress
The talks also focused on the need for joint work on global challenges such as climate change and debt relief for emerging nations, issues that Yellen has spoken about before.
“The physical and economic impacts of climate change are mounting across the globe, including here in California,” the Treasury secretary said. “We discussed specific areas where we can enhance our cooperation on climate finance beyond our co-chairing of the G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group.
“I also underscored that too many countries continue to face high risk of debt distress and a debt architecture that does not work as it should to support them. I emphasized the need for us to build on our good recent progress in the Zambia case to make much faster progress on other debt restructuring cases.
“And we discussed the crucial roles we have to play in making the debt architecture work better and faster,” she said.
- Reuters with additional reporting and editing by Jim Pollard
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