China expresses ‘firm opposition’ to latest round of US sanctions on Russian supply chain

China’s Ministry of Commerce has denounced the latest round of sanctions declared by the United States on Friday against products and services, many of them provided by Chinese companies and which enable Moscow to continue its war in Ukraine, as a “wrong practice” to which Beijing expresses its “firm opposition.” In its statement, published on Sunday, the ministry warns that it will “take the necessary measures to resolutely defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies” affected by the measure, in a continuation of the warning issued at the beginning of the year by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Among the companies included in the list are two major Chinese suppliers of machine tools and six Chinese suppliers of electronic components. Several Chinese or Hong Kong companies were also sanctioned for their support for the Russian company Special Technology Center, which makes surveillance and reconnaissance drones, along with companies from Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. The Hong Kong, Turkish and Russian branches of Russian citizen Maxim Marchenko, who was arrested by the FBI in September 2023 for smuggling microelectronic material out of the United States, were also targeted in Friday’s sanctions package. US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo warned on Friday that the Russian economy is now “a tool at the service of the Kremlin’s industrial complex” as everything seems to be geared towards paying for the costs of the invasion of Ukraine. In response, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has deplored the decision as a “typical example of unilateral sanctions and “far-reaching jurisdiction”. This behaviour, Beijing denounces, “undermines the order and rules of international trade, hinders normal international economic and trade exchanges and affects the security and stability of global industrial and supply chains”.