The European Union (EU) said on Wednesday that it plans to deliver an ultimatum to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in a virtual summit on Friday that assisting the Russian invasion will be punished with sanctions.
“The Ukraine war – and China’s warm relationship with the Kremlin – will overshadow the meeting at which the EU is looking to show its hardening line toward China and warn against any active support for Russia at the summit,” Radio Free Europe (RFE) reported.
RFE noted China is talking a great deal about its partnership with Russia but has “so far quietly adhered to Western sanctions” and denied reports that Russia has asked it for military equipment.
An EU official told CNBC on Wednesday that a key goal of Friday’s summit will be “ensuring, in a way, the neutrality of China so they don’t help Russia.”
Other EU officials billed the summit as “a defining moment for EU-China relations” and said the original agenda of “small initiatives” had been scrapped to focus on the “key message” that “there will be consequences if China does circumvent sanctions.”
CNBC noted various European leaders pleaded with China last week to use its influence with Russia to stop the war in Ukraine, but now the EU seems to be falling back to a position of warning China to stay out of the war.
“Friday’s summit was meant to be an opportunity to put a year of EU-China tensions in the rearview mirror and forge new ground for cooperation. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s refusal to condemn Moscow’s attack, however, have decisively dampened European expectations of a reset,” analysts at the Eurasia Group observed.
The United Kingdom warned China last week that it will face sanctions if it sends weapons to Russia, much as the U.K. has already sanctioned Belarus.
“Anyone who wants to support the outrageous and illegal invasion of a democratic nation needs to be cognizant of what they’re doing and the impacts that is going to have elsewhere,” British International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan said last Wednesday.
A Trafalgar Group survey published on Wednesday found 74.7 percent of respondents supported the U.S. imposing sanctions on China if China is caught providing aid to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A majority of respondents – American nationals – said that China should face “similar” measures to the crushing international sanctions imposed on Russia if Beijing begins providing direct assistance to the Russian invasion.
The partisan breakdown revealed little difference between the parties on the issue, as 70 percent of Democrats supported sanctions against China compared to 78 percent of Republicans.
Trafalgar does not appear to have quizzed its poll respondents at length about what kind of “aid” should trigger U.S. sanctions against China. U.S. officials have argued China is already aiding the Russian invasion by giving it political cover and economic assistance.
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