China’s commerce ministry said on Wednesday that it had urged Britain to stop sanctioning Chinese firms after the country sanctioned five Chinese companies over their links to Russia.

In a statement, the ministry said China "firmly opposes Britain’s actions on the grounds that the Chinese companies are “related to Russia.”

Britain last week imposed its first sanctions targeting vessels in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “shadow fleet” that it said was used to circumvent Western sanctions on the trade in Russian oil.

The action, part of 50 new sanctions and coordinated with G7 partners, also targeted suppliers of munitions, machine tools, microelectronics, and logistics to Russia’s military, including entities based in China, Israel, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey, the British government said.

Britain’s approach has ignored China’s representations and the momentum and had a negative impact on economic and trade relations between China and the UK, China’s commerce ministry said.

“Britain’s approach is a unilateral sanction that has no basis in international law,” it added. “We urge Britain to immediately correct its erroneous practices.”

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      6 months ago

      Britain has been harsher on China than anybody in the EU for a while now.

      E.g. the UK is one of only four countries in the world that have the balls to formally recognise the Uyghur Genocide as a genocide. The UK offered asylum to over 3 million Hong Kong citizens. The UK sanctioned china over attempts to infiltrate the UK’s Electoral Commission. The UK got into a spat with China over them hacking some MoD server. Several Chinese spies have been charged by the UK, etc…

      UK-China relations were already rocky even before the bullshit in Hong Kong (which as you can imagine is a big issue for the UK and not others) and Russia invading Ukraine (in which the UK has been one of the top supporters of Ukraine), and it’s got worse from there. Clearly you’re talking about something that you know nothing about.

      You’re letting your xenophobic attitude towards the UK cloud your judgement. Put your hate aside for a moment and actually look at reality.