China Humiliated Blinken But Blinken Kept Begging Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute, It is not clear whether a Chinese official was at the Beijing airport to bid farewell to Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he ended his three-day visit to China on Friday, but the send-off was in any event low-key and Chinese leader Xi Jinping slighted America’s top diplomat at the end of his troubled stay. Also, China, literally and figuratively, did not roll out the red carpet for his arrival in Shanghai on Wednesday. Only a low-level official was on hand to greet Blinken as he stepped off the plane. “The Chinese government flouted international protocols at the airport on the secretary of state’s arrival in Shanghai and departure from Beijing,” Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank told Gatestone. “It was petty.” “This was more than a slight,” Burton, a former Canadian diplomat who served in Beijing, said. “Aside from a calculated insult to the dignity of the United States, the move indicates Xi Jinping is making clear that the accepted norms of diplomacy will not be respected by China anymore.” Blinken was in China to discuss the growing list of disagreements between Washington and Beijing. Not surprisingly, he did not accomplish anything there other than register America’s complaints on matters such as Beijing’s support for the Russian war effort in Ukraine and unfair treatment of U.S. companies. On every major issue, the U.S. and China take different sides, and the Chinese have clearly dug in. Blinken was reduced to begging. As a result, America is resorting to the dialogue-is-progress narrative. “I think it’s important to underscore the value—in fact, the necessity—of direct engagement, of sustained engagement, of speaking to each other, laying out our differences which are real, seeking to work

US Imposes Sanctions On Chinese Companies Vital To Russia’s Defense Industry The Biden administration and US Treasury on Wednesday unveiled nearly 300 new anti-Russia sanctions which especially target third party entities which are said to help Moscow in sanctions-busting activities. “The almost 300 targets being sanctioned by both Treasury and the Department of State include sanctions on dozens of actors that have enabled Russia to acquire desperately needed technology and equipment from abroad,” the Treasury Department said in a press release. So-called dual-use items out of China are a key focus of the action, which is being hailed as one of “the most wide-ranging actions against Chinese companies so far in Washington’s sanctions aimed at Russia.” 20 companies based in China and Hong Kong were named. Companies in Turkey, Belgium, Azerbaijan, Slovakia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are also targeted. “Treasury has consistently warned that companies will face significant consequences for providing material support for Russia’s war, and the U.S. is imposing them today on almost 300 targets,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said. It also marks the furthest reaching action that seeks to specifically degrade Russia’s military-industrial base, as well as its biological and chemical weapons programs. For example, companies involved in manufacturing precursor materials for Russia to make explosives are listed. Last week during Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China he warned about Beijing’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. “Russia would struggle to sustain its assault on Ukraine without China’s support,” Blinken had claimed provocatively, while also asserting China is the “top supplier” of Russia’s defense industrial base – albeit not in terms of lethal aid (but instead “dual use” technologies). This support to Russia’s defense industry additionally constitutes a “medium to long-term threat that many Europeans feel viscerally that Russia poses to them,” Blinken had asserted. Meanwhile, as Ukraine forces continue getting pushed back from