China’s Compliance With US Sanctions and Russia
Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter
China’s Voluntary Compliance With US Sanctions Prevents Russia From Paying Its SCO Dues. This wasn’t officially a secret, but it also wasn’t exactly public knowledge either.
Russia's Special Presidential Representative for SCO Affairs Bakhtiyor Khakimov revealed last week that “It's no secret, but we, for example, and I mean the Russian side, are facing serious difficulties in transferring our share contribution to the general budget of the SCO, because the bank is located in China, and, according to the basic documents, the share contribution is made only in US dollars.” China’s voluntary compliance with US sanctions therefore prevents Russia from paying its SCO dues.
Unlike what Khakimov claimed, while this wasn’t officially a secret, it wasn’t exactly public knowledge either. Many among the Mainstream Media and the Alt-Media Community alike are under the false impression that China proudly rebuffs all of the US’ sanctions demands due to Beijing’s sharp rhetoric about them. This is in spite of RT informing the world about Russia and China’s US-provoked payment problems in early September. They wrote about it here, which was then analyzed here.
Those who might have shrugged off that report as hyperbole or imagined that it was a “5D chess master plan” to “psyche out the US” like some on social media speculated now know that it was accurate after what Khakimov just revealed. China is so afraid of the US’ secondary sanctions threats that it won’t even let Russia pay its dollar-denominated SCO dues despite both being among its founding members. This reality is the exact opposite of what the general Western and non-Western public thought.
Few among them knew that the organization’s dues were denominated in dollars, which was probably agreed to at the turn of the century during its founding for reasons of financial convenience but wasn’t ever modified even after the West’s unprecedented sanctions against Russia since 2022. It’s frankly surprising that no changes were made after that nor any workarounds devised, so much so that Khakimov felt that he had to complain about this publicly, considering the SCO’s security-centric focus.