Republican lawmakers are pushing the Biden administration to pressure China to do more to persuade Russia to end its attack on Ukraine.
Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke for nearly two hours on March 18 as the White House looked to deter Beijing from providing military or economic assistance for Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
China, however, has repeated Moscow narratives justifying the war while blaming the U.S. and NATO.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, was among the lawmakers who want Biden to make clear the consequences to Xi if China continues to support Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"President Biden’s call with General Secretary Xi Jinping reportedly failed to convince China to stay on the sidelines," Gallagher told the Washington Examiner.
"But the reality is China is not on the sidelines — they’ve supported Putin's war from the beginning. They have effectively declared a new Cold War against the West."
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs, told the Examiner that China was "complicit" in Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine.
"The Chinese Communist Party has proven it is not willing or capable of acting as a constructive party in Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine," McCaul said Monday. "Rather, they are complicit. The United States must unleash technology and financial sanctions on Xi’s regime until it proves through action that it is stepping back from a cliff that drops into outright hostility."
Gallagher agreed: "We need to wake up to that reality and make the consequences for any concrete Chinese intervention in Ukraine clear," he told the Examiner. "This includes publishing any evidence of China sending military equipment to Russia, banning the export of semiconductor equipment and design software to China, and ending negotiations between the Securities and Exchange Commission and its Chinese counterpart over audit standards that would give a lifeline to Chinese firms trying to list on U.S. exchanges."
McCaul, during a Thursday press conference, suggested steps be taken to prevent U.S. capital flows from helping China advance its military.
He said the U.S. licenses $40 billion to go into China for their semiconductor industry and $60 billion more for 5G tech leader Huawei, which he said "has to stop."
"China, they're very deceptive, and they're going to be a friend as much as they can to Russia without getting in trouble with the international community, but they're gonna play it very skillfully like they usually do," McCaul told Examiner on Thursday.
"They're economically helping them now, so they are starting to bankroll them. And they value their relationship with Russia, although Russia is looking more like a bad date — Putin is not looking so great to them right now. But they're just going to play in to the extent it's valuable to China — and that is, Are you going to back us with Taiwan?"
Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, has asked national security adviser Jake Sullivan for a briefing on Biden’s phone call with Xi.
"If the president continues to show weakness, it is going to embolden these authoritarian regimes that have self-declared themselves our adversaries," Turner told the Examiner.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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