On April 22 US Congress voted in the $61 billion “Ukraine Response” bill. On the same day it also voted in a $8.1 billion “Indo-Pacific” bill.
The latter allocates $1.9 billion to replace DoD arms that will be given, or have been given to Taiwan for free.
It also allocates some $1.7 billion for Taiwan to use to order arms from US companies.
$2.7 billion in weapons to Taipei in just one fiscal year for free.
Two days later on April 24 the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken traveled to China, and demanded that her government stops Chinese companies from selling electronic components and factory equipment to Russia.
Don’t you just love the American Empire?
The US formally recognizes there exists only one China with a capital in Beijing. This from the US point of view makes Taipei a renegade government on sovereign Chinese territory. Nonetheless, the US gives away weapons to Taipei for free, while demanding China damages its economy and stops selling non-weapons to Russia for cold cash. (Nothing is said of machine tool exports to Ukraine and Western arms makers which China is also willing to fulfill.)
China already refrains from giving away weapons to Russia, and largely refrains from selling weapons and ammunition. Yet this is not enough, a hostile Empire that arms Taipei against China for free, demands that Beijing sanctions itself. Sanctions itself in order to help the Empire exhaust and humble Russia so that the Empire can then focus all of its resources on China alone.
And what’s will all the utopianism anyway?
I can’t believe anyone at State Department seriously thought Beijing would comply with these shocking demands, and that they would do anything but offend and aggravate the Chinese, so why even bring them up?
Did Washington seriously not expect that eventually Russia would start investing in its military production capacity, and that China would make its machine tools available for that? (As she makes them available to anyone willing to pay for them.)
The only shocking thing is how long it took for Russia to start doing it. Did DC think the inactivity would last forever?
Now DC will pass some punitive sanctions on Chinese manufacturers and banks that will delay some shipments and make others marginally more expensive, but most of all will help confirm to Beijing that DC sees it as an enemy.
BTW, the Russians are not entirely dependent on machine tool imports. Since 2014 they have been building CNC machines of their own — but they lack the capacity to build them on a truly grand scale like the Chinese.