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Mark Magnier

China’s top UN diplomat slammed the US on Friday over its coercive behaviour, sanctioning of Chinese vessels and firms and for starting the Iran war along with Israel as Beijing assumed the rotating one-month presidency of the UN Security Council.
The verbal blast came as Washington heaped more pressure on China on Friday by sanctioning a China-based petroleum terminal operator, the latest in a string of recent US moves to cut off Chinese funding to Iran under what the White House has dubbed Operation Economic Fury.
“We don’t believe it’s fair to sanction Chinese ships or companies,” Fu Cong, China’s punchy UN ambassador, told reporters.
“The Iran war is the biggest example of the rise of unilateralism, power politics and some bullying practice by certain partners. And it is dealing heavy blows to the rule of law in international affairs.”
The UN has come under blistering criticism by US President Donald Trump and his Republican allies for inefficiency, bloat and its inability to end a growing number of global wars and conflicts at its 80th anniversary.
Fu said China would do what it could over the next month as Security Council head, but its clout was limited in forging a lasting ceasefire and reopening the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
“We’ll try our best to work on our American friends, but how much influence we can have, I’m not sure,” said Fu, China’s former ambassador to the European Union.
“Frankly speaking, we are very concerned about some of the remarks we have been hearing recently about this ceasefire being temporary, about the need to initiate another round of attacks.”


Fu said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will chair a ‌Security Council session on May 26. The State Department did not immediately respond to a question on whether US Secretary of State Marco Rubio would meet with him.
Asked on Friday by reporters whether he planned new strikes on Iran, Trump said, “Why would I tell you that?”
Fu said it was up to Iran and Washington to stop blocking the waterway, through which some 20 per cent of the world’s oil flows.
“The most urgent issue is to keep the ceasefire. And the ceasefire needs ‌to last, and there has to be a good-faith negotiation between the ⁠two sides,” he ⁠said.
“I think the international community should be mobilised and raise our voices against the resumption of ‌fighting.”
Friday’s announced US sanctions on China’s Qingdao Haiye Oil Terminal Company for enabling “the flow of billions of dollars to Tehran that has relied on sophisticated evasion schemes” come as tensions rise between the two giants two weeks before Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to sit down in Beijing.
In recent days, Washington has also sanctioned a major independent Chinese petrochemical refinery and dozens of shipping firms and vessels it says are part of a “shadow fleet” keen on hiding Iranian oil cargoes.
The Trump administration has also accused Chinese firms of providing components used in Iranian drones.
Fu denied that Beijing was assisting Tehran’s war effort.
“There is no military cooperation between China and Iran,” he told reporters in the UN Secretariat building, without addressing any dual-use Chinese shipments.
“The allegations from some of the US officials, they were false. But we are very sympathetic to what the Iranian people are enduring with, as I said, the illegitimate war that was imposed on the people.”




Beyond trying to help effect a Middle East settlement, Beijing’s top UN envoy said China would use its one-month presidency to bolster development, especially in the Global South, strengthen multilateralism and the UN Charter and push UN reform.
This comes as the Trump administration has slashed its UN contributions and Republicans slam the international body.
“The need for accountability and reform within the United Nations – anybody that doesn’t see that is blind,” Florida congressman Cory Mills told an oversight committee on Wednesday.
“We must ensure that all taxpayer dollars sent to the UN are not supporting US adversaries, leftists and woke pet projects or actual terrorists themselves.”
Fu declined to say on Friday whether the war would overshadow the scheduled Trump-Xi summit, the leaders’ first sit-down in six months, other than to venture that the issue would be high on their agenda assuming the Strait of Hormuz was still closed.
China’s senior diplomat added that US-China relations were about far more than the blocked waterway, which has driven up energy prices and dented the global economy, calling for greater bilateral cooperation based on mutual respect.
But Fu also appeared to suggest that the meeting could be postponed a second time after its original March 31 start was put off by the war.
“As far as I know, the two sides are making preparations for this historic visit,” he said. “We do hope that this visit will materialise.”
As Washington’s foreign policy has become increasingly impulsive and alienated many of its allies – upending international precedent, eschewing diplomacy and undercutting the global economy with its tariff policies and foreign conflicts – more countries have found stability-obsessed China increasingly attractive.
Beijing has been quite happy to accrue the goodwill and has been careful to pay its UN dues, even if in some years it has paid them too late for the institution to spend them. But it has expressed little interest in funding the full gamut of global programmes hurt by the US retreat.
The US has been the largest funder of the UN general fund with 22 per cent followed by China at 20 per cent based on a formula tied to GDP.
“The US is number one, but they’re not paying so China is already de facto number one,” Fu said. “If the US withdraws, of course other countries need to step up, and China will be happy to step up.”
Added the former law student: “It’s for the US to decide. And we do believe, as I said, this is not a zero-sum game between China and the US.”


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Curbs tied to Iran and a fragile ceasefire cast a shadow over the leaders’ planned Beijing summit as tensions between the powers mount


Curbs tied to Iran and a fragile ceasefire cast a shadow over the leaders’ planned Beijing summit as tensions between the powers mount.


China’s UN envoy blasts US ‘bullying’ as sanctions widen before Trump-Xi talks

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Curbs tied to Iran and a fragile ceasefire cast a shadow over the leaders’ planned Beijing summit as tensions between the powers mount

Curbs tied to Iran and a fragile ceasefire cast a shadow over the leaders’ planned Beijing summit as tensions between the powers mount