JRL NEWSWATCH: “China’s ties with Russia are growing more solid” – The Economist
“Our columnist visits a future Russian outpost in China’s most advanced spaceport”
“… Here, in this showcase for Chinese technology, … Moscow Power Engineering Institute … has been invited to open a branch in Wenchang with room for 10,000 students of aerospace engineering and science. … Chinese media have already announced that, unusually, the Hainan institute will be a Russian-led academy, rather than a joint venture with a Chinese university. Russia’s outpost in Wenchang will be next to a vast, partly built space-technology park. … [C]ranes rise[] above future laboratories, a satellite-assembly shed and a radar receiving station. The prime site is evidence that Sino-Russian space co-operation, long held back …, is surging ahead. … [Meanwhile,] the Biden administration and China’s government [have been] arguing, publicly, about commercial sales to Russia that prop up [] Putin’s war machine. With [the U.S. administration] imposing ever-higher tariffs on Chinese goods and ever-stricter bans on sensitive high-tech exports to China, they cannot credibly use promises of access to American markets to change Chinese behaviour. Instead Team Biden is taking a twin-track approach … [with] threats of American sanctions on Chinese banks that finance sales to Russia’s defence industry … [and] suggestions that Europe’s more open markets may start to close if Chinese firms help Russia … attack Ukraine. American sanctions are a powerful threat: banks cut off from the dollar lose access to most international markets. …”
Click here for: “China’s ties with Russia are growing more solid; Our columnist visits a future Russian outpost in China’s most advanced spaceport” – The Economist