US Official Sees Curbs on Exports to Russia as Template for China

The US’s successful collaboration with 37 other nations that’s driven down exports to Russia serves as a blueprint for a new regime on tackling threats from China, the head of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said. 

Washington has imposed a wave of restrictions on exports to Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February, cutting President Vladimir Putin off from the majority of the technology needed to sustain the war. Countries joining the US in instituting the controls have included Japan, Australia, and European Union members.  

As a result, US exports to Russia have dropped about 88% by value this last year, while shipments from other countries have retreated about 60%, Commerce Under Secretary Alan Estevez said in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Tuesday. This is the first time since the Cold War that nations cooperated plurilaterally on export controls outside of the four existing multilateral regimes on arms, nuclear supplies, chemical weapons and missiles, he said.

“I believe we need a new regime -- we’ve been talking to allies about that, and it’s not just for Russia. It’s about China,” Estevez said. “The threat from China and their diversion of technology through civil-military fusion for human-rights abuses, building power and threatening their neighbors is as important for a new regime.” 

The BIS chief, who calls himself “the chief technology protection officer of the United States,” added that the momentum the US has with its allies over Russia “gives us a great framework, a great stepping-off point to work on that.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Wednesday at a regular press briefing in Beijing that US sanctions had “complicated and expanded the Ukraine crisis.”

They had also led to turbulence in energy and food markets, he added, “bringing a lot of difficulties to people in the world, especially developing countries.”

Beijing and Washington are at odds over national security, trade and human-rights issues, with the relationship likely at its worst since former President Richard Nixon’s historic trip in 1972 helped re-establish diplomatic ties, US Ambassador Nicholas Burns said last month.

The US has stepped up criticism of China for its diplomatic support of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, which has contributed to surging inflation across the globe. The White House is considering rolling back some punitive tariffs imposed on China by the Trump administration, with trade chief Katherine Tai saying the US wants to realign its commercial ties with China rather than seek a “divorce” between the world’s biggest economies. 

She has said discussions with China have become “unduly difficult” and that the US needs new tools to stand against anti-competitive behavior by the world’s second-largest economy. 

The US has added almost 600 Chinese parties to its so-called entity list -- which prohibits American firms from doing business with them without first obtaining a US government license, Estevez said. About 107 of these were added in the Biden administration, some for continuing to supply Russian entities after the export controls were introduced. 

“China remains a complex challenge in the competition between democracies and autocracies,” Estevez said.