Here is the original article (in German).
China, including Hong Kong, is responsible for 80% of the sanctions circumvention against Russia, but denies any involvement.
This is stated in an internal report of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs […]
The document states that the EU sanctions have had a significant impact on the Russian economy, in particular by restricting exports of military goods through Armenia, Serbia, Uzbekistan and India. At the same time, problems persist with Kazakhstan, the UAE and Turkey, which do not provide complete data on export suspensions.
At the meeting, EU Sanctions Commissioner David O’Sullivan stressed that China, including Hong Kong, plays a key role in circumventing sanctions. However, Beijing denies any involvement in this. At the same time, the participation of EU companies in these schemes also weakens the European Commission’s position in negotiations with third countries.
The document also reports on the EU’s success in fighting Russia’s “shadow fleet”. O’Sullivan called for decisive action against the ports in Turkey, India and Malaysia that serve these vessels.
I feel China isn’t under enough pressure, they get to play both sides. I am normally not for ‘you’re either with us or against us’-diplomacy but if you can’t support our enemy and consider yourself neutral at the same time.
China can endure more than the west so it would be a difficult fight to pick. Sure we could tackle their economy but Trump already lost that battle. It showed they were willing to take short term hits and they, as an authoritarian state, cam weather them better the west and the fledgling Oligopoly US.
True, but his pressure was very hard and that is not the only way to put pressure on someone. I don’t think any country should go about it like ‘we will make them do what we want because we are big and powerful’ but I think in this it would be fair to say ‘these are our interests and if you harm them it will make us less willing to do things that are in your interest’.
When all you have is a broken hammer, everything is a nail about to get fucked.
From Russias view China is also supporting their enemy by providing material to Ukraine and NATO countries that supply Ukraine.
In 2024 China remained largest import origin for Ukraine at $17 billion.
Biggest import categories in 2024 are electronics, machinery and aircraft. It is safe to assume a substantial part of this to have went into Ukrainian defense.
https://tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/imports-by-country
https://tradingeconomics.com/ukraine/imports/china
In terms of trade i would argue China to be indeed neutral. When it comes to diplomatic cover and Chinese mercenaries being employed by Russia, China is supporting Russia beyond being neutral.
If they were open about trading with Russia and publicly exclaimed they do not want to be a part in this and choose to trade like they did before the war they would be neutral and EU wouldn’t have much to complain about. But that is not the case, they lie about their business with Russia and therefor aren’t neutral but ‘neutral’ if you get what I mean.
That’s literally exactly what neutrality means, they don’t care who you consider an enemy because they’re not picking a side
@Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml
In 2023, Lu Shaye, then Chinese ambassador to France, openly claimed that former Soviet-republics - like Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and many others - have no legal status (now Mr. Shaye serves as Special Representative of the Chinese Government for European Affairs).
China has a high interest in supporting Russia, and it goes far beyond Ukraine and Europe.
When Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Russia at the start of May o to celebrate victory day in Moscow, Chinese state-controlled media outlet South China Morning Post reported that China’s Xi Jinping kicked off his state visit by thanking Moscow for supporting Taiwan’s reunification with mainland China.
Two of the global challenges -the war in Ukraine and China’s aggression against Taiwan- appear to be closely linked, at least from China’s point of view.
“Aggression against Taiwan” lol k
In your country China is probably neutral towards Taiwan. O no never mind, you can’t be neutral to a part that already ‘belongs to you’ lol
Taiwan is historically and culturally Chinese, but China has made it very clear they have no intention of reunifying by force, if they wanted to they could have done so already. As with all of our diplomatic relationships the US doesn’t actually give a shit about Taiwanese independence, we just want a staging ground close to our biggest global competitor so we can more conveniently meddle in regional affairs for our benefit.
Taiwan is historically Polynesian.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesians
Taiwan is not only staging ground but also prevents Chinese access to the Pacific during times of war. It’s the only place for a deep water submarine base for China.
You obviously didn’t bother reading the wiki article you posted, it says absolutely nothing about Taiwan being culturally or politically associated with Polynesia at any point in recorded history. What it does say is that the prehistoric origins of their language group can be roughly traced to/through Taiwan, for a detailed explanation try clicking the link in the first paragraph for “urheimat” and actually reading it too.
Preventing China from doing things in China that China wants to do would fall neatly under the category of “meddling in the region to our benefit” which I mentioned before.
I don’t really disagree with you. To me the Polynesian backstory highlights that it is all just politics.
If you like to argue the history of history then there most likely are no records of Polynesians in Taiwan but there could have been.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters
Aside from the fact that China accounts for 80% of sanctions circumvention routes against Russia, thus supporting the Kremlin in its war, China is supplying Russian military factories with chemicals, gunpowder, components, just to name another example.
Yeah but they’re not doing it for free and both China and India are paying cheap rates for Russian oil. If Russia is using that oil to barter for goods then that helps them but not the Russian coffers. This war will end when Russia runs out of money and can’t pay large signing bonuses anymore.
And?
How would you want to pressure China? China is exporting nuclear power plants to Britain and electric cars to the EU. They are an advanced country that does not need western technologies. Unless you do a naval blockade, China doesn’t need us but we need China.
I have to respectfully disagree with that view.
First of all, the EU is a net exporter of electric cars. In 2024, the bloc exported 830,000 electric vehicles (+9 per cent year-on-year), while imports were at about 680,000 electric cars.
While imports from China remained steady in 2024 at more than 400 000 electric cars (60% of EU imports), the share of Chinese OEMs in imports from China grew to two-thirds in 2024, up from 50% in the previous year. The Chinese OEM Geely accounted for almost 40% of these imports, mainly through its brand Volvo Cars, according to statistics by the IEA.
Within the EU, sales of EVs by Chinese brands count for a small fraction of the total sales volume, with China’s BYD having sold ~7,000 in April 2025, for example (no 10 in the bloc), while market leader VW counts for ~200,000. If the EU would bloc Chinese EV imports, for example, it would hurt China extensively (supposedly more than the EU) as the Chinese economy could not sell its massive (and intentionally created) overcapacity. The EU doesn’t need Chinese EVs, but China needs the EU (and other foreign markets) if it wants to maintains its business model.
More importantly, however, there are very strong mutual dependencies between China and the West that have the potential to result in high economic costs for both sides in the event of a geopolitical conflict, may it be caused by Beijing’s ongoing support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, a possible Chinese attack against Taiwan, or other events.
The Western share of Chinese imports is certainly at very high levels for many very important key products such as semiconductors and some machinery.
But the West also accounts for a high share of China’s imports of other important goods, such as some foodstuffs, certain raw materials, and also some luxury products like perfume. If we look at China’s import/export ratios, we see it is 65:1 for ores, slag, and ash, and with an import share of almost 50 per cent the West holds a high leverage in this sector.
Chinese import/export ratios for mineral fuels is 8:1 (although the Western share is below 20 per cent here as the majority comes form emerging economies), for meat it is 36:1, for grain 21:1.
China is almost unilaterally dependent on aircraft and spacecraft machinery and parts thereof. Although the import/export ratio is quite low (2:1), the western share of Chinese imports is some 97 percent, according to the German Economic Institute (opens pdf – German source). This category displays China’s highest import dependency on the West, and there is practically no substitution by alternative trading partners and there appears to be only a small degree of substitutability possible through an expansion of domestic production.
[If interested, EU-China and other trade data with relevant links can be found here and using the Trading Economics data posted by @Saleh@feddit.org in this thread – and many other data bases, but make sure you look at the customs data, not China’s official statistics or something.]
So I don’t say that the EU or the West doesn’t depend on China, but I say that China depends also on the West if we look at the data of hilghly complex global supply chains. There are strong mutual dependencies.
This sounds impressive without anything that is existential for China. All commodities can be replaced if China pays a small premium for nonwestern sources while the rest of the world buys from western sources.
Airplane parts are inconvenient but China is starting to build their own aircrafts. If sanctions start, they will be able to create knockoffs for all necessary spare parts. But they also have a highspeed rail network, so they won’t be worried too much.
At this point in development, pressuring China will only accellerate the full independence of China. It would be Huawei on a national scale.
The dangerous part is that many former colonies won’t side with their former masters if they get the opportunity to break free.
I disagree, especially with US moving away. We certainly need china for a lot of things, but aside the eu is their biggest economic partner and China relies heavily on export for keeping their economy running. Not giving access to western technologies is a way of putting pressure on China, but I think you’re right the amount of weight we heavy over China greatly decreased over the last years. But there are many ways in which Europe can put it’s weight in the fight and personally I hope they will mainly do so by using soft power. China might not be very susceptible to talks about moral values if you look at how they threat Uyghurs for example, but I think the communist party does know how it feel to be the underdog. What Russia is doing to Ukraine is in no way fair and China has also been treated unfairly many times before in history. Also China wants to expand beyond producing stuff for the rest of the world, and since they are becoming more expensive they might need to move away from production just like the middle-east needs to move away from oil. Just because they are getting more advanced technologically and are getting a stronger military etc, does not mean they don’t need friends. Their friendship with Europe is under pressure if they actively support enemies of the EU.
China doesn’t need exports for their economy. The Chinese citizens can perfectly consume everything on their own. Countries only have to export to finance imports. In China’s case, it would be enough to export to the countries that deliver the raw materials.
China will be friends with all those countries because Colonialism will make those countries prefer China over Europe. China is even pushing the Monroe Doctrine and becoming friends with countries in South America.
It’s not China that needs friends but Europe. For some reason, we are ignoring Bismark again and are on our way to isolate us in preparation for the next global war. This time not only Germany, but all of Europe.
Lol give me a break, Chinese consumers don’t buy shit, neither local nor imported from abroad. They are getting wealthier but they don’t spend it.
A large percentage of Chinas gdp is domestic consumption, and that percentage is growing by leaps and bounds year over year. They are moving away from reliance on export, though not there yet.
Lol, and you don’t see a way for China to fix this?
Sure they could, but I think they rather give Russia less support than having to help all the companies that struggle because of their lost income.
For China, there exists a bigger risk than losing business. The USA could do a naval blockade. China cannot survive that without Russia. They won’t sacrifice their security for short term profits.
What dependency on Russia am I missing here?