Georgi Kantchev and Lingling Wei of The Wall Street Journal report that Beijing has been learning from the Ukraine war. It’s a real-world case study of how to circumvent Western sanctions. They write:
China has been supporting Russia’s economy since the start of the Ukraine war by buying its oil while supplying it with everything from microelectronics to washing machines.
Meanwhile, Beijing has been getting its own strategic benefit: a real-world case study in how to circumvent Western sanctions.
An interagency group, set up by China in the months following the full-scale invasion, has studied the impact of sanctions and produced reports regularly for the country’s leadership, according to people familiar with the matter. The goal is to draw lessons about how to mitigate them, particularly in case a conflict over Taiwan prompts the U.S. and its allies to impose similar penalties on China, the people said. […]
“For the Chinese, Russia is really a sandbox on how sanctions work and how to manage them,” said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, who focuses on China-Russia relations. “They know that if there is a Taiwan contingency, the tool kit that will be applied against them will be similar.”
People close to Beijing’s decision-making cautioned that the study group doesn’t mean the country is readying an invasion. Rather, Beijing is preparing for the “extreme scenario” of an armed conflict and its economic repercussions, the people said. […]
To bypass the oil price cap, for example, Moscow uses a network of tankers not owned by Western countries or insured by Western companies. More than half of Russia’s seaborne oil is now transported with this so-called shadow fleet, analysts say, and the U.S. and its allies have been racing to target vessels with sanctions.
Meanwhile, Russia found a route through ex-Soviet republics to acquire banned Western goods from luxury cars to dual-use goods with military applications such as microchips in what has come to be known as the “Eurasian roundabout.”
Read more here.
