The US and China are sending top aides to Rome on Monday as tensions between the two countries mount over the Russia/Ukraine war and worries spread that the conflict will take even darker turns.
Speaking in advance of the talks, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan bluntly warned China to avoid helping Russia evade punishment from global sanctions that have hammered the Russian economy. “We will not allow that to go forward,” he said.
US officials are also accusing China of spreading Russian disinformation that could be a pretext for chemical or biological weapons attacks launched by Vladimir Putin’s forces in Ukraine.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put China in a delicate spot with two of its biggest trading partners: the US and European Union.
China needs access to these markets, yet it has also made gestures supportive of Moscow, joining with Russia in declaring a friendship with “no limits”.
In his talks with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi, Mr Sullivan will be looking for limits in what Beijing will do for Moscow.
“I’m not going to sit here publicly and brandish threats,” he told CNN in a round of Sunday news show interviews.
“But what I will tell you is we are communicating directly and privately to Beijing that there absolutely will be consequences” if China helps Russia “backfill” its losses from the sanctions.
“We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world,” he said.
The White House said the talks would focus on the direct impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine on regional and global security.
Biden administration officials say Beijing is spreading false Russian claims that Ukraine was running chemical and biological weapons labs with US support.
They say China is effectively providing cover if Russia moves ahead with a biological or chemical weapons attack on Ukrainians.
When Russia starts accusing other countries of preparing to launch biological or chemical attacks, Mr Sullivan told NBC, “it’s a good tell that they may be on the cusp of doing it themselves”.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, speaking on ABC, said “we haven’t seen anything that indicates some sort of imminent chemical or biological attack right now, but we’re watching this very, very closely”.
The US accusations about Russian disinformation and Chinese complicity came after Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged with no evidence that the US was financing Ukrainian chemical and biological weapons labs.
The Russian claim was echoed by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who claimed there were 26 bio-labs and related facilities in “which the US department of defence has absolute control”.
The United Nations has said it has received no information backing up such accusations.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the claims “preposterous”.
“Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them,” Ms Psaki tweeted last week. “It’s a clear pattern.”
The international community has assessed for years that Russia has used chemical weapons in carrying out assassination attempts against Putin detractors such as Alexei Navalny and former spy Sergei Skripal. Russia also supports the Assad government in Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its people in a decade-long civil war.
China has been one of few countries to avoid criticising the Russians for its invasion of Ukraine.
China’s Xi Jinping hosted Russian president Vladimir Putin for the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just weeks before Russia launched the February 24 invasion.
During Mr Putin’s visit to China last month, the two leaders issued a 5,000-word statement declaring limitless friendship.
The Chinese abstained on UN votes censuring Russia and has criticised economic sanctions against Moscow. It has expressed its support for peace talks and offered its services as a mediator, despite questions about its neutrality and scant experience mediating international conflict.
But questions remain over how far Beijing will go to alienate the alliance and put its own economy at risk.
Mr Sullivan said China and all countries were on notice that they could not “basically bail Russia out … give Russia a workaround to the sanctions”, with impunity.
Speaking on CNN, Mr Sullivan said the administration believes China knew that Putin “was planning something” before the invasion of Ukraine. But he said the Chinese government “may not have understood the full extent of it because it’s very possible that Putin lied to them the same way that he lied to Europeans and others”.
