China is Russia’s biggest war backer, BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink said on Tuesday.
Fink was speaking at a panel at the Berlin Global Dialogue conference when he said that Western businesses need to re-evaluate their relationship with China.
“Russia’s biggest supporter and fundamental supporter of the Russian economy is China. And that has to be at least discussed,” Fink said in comments reported by Bloomberg.
“I’m not here to make any judgments but I don’t believe there’s been enough assessment.”
Earlier in the panel, Fink expressed surprise that there hasn’t been a “larger questioning or demanding” of China’s support for Russia amidst the latter’s war with Ukraine.
“You’re supporting our enemy, we’re putting billions and billions of dollars into supporting the survival of Ukraine, and there should be a cost to that,” Fink said of China.
Fink told dialogue attendees that China’s continual backing of the Russian economy also means BlackRock may need to review its operations in the Chinese market.
“We have businesses in China, I’m sure everybody here has some businesses in China,” Fink said.
“We all have to re-evaluate that, like we have to re-evaluate a risk in liquidity traps, a risk in everything,” he added.
Representatives for Fink at BlackRock did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
China has been a critical lifeline for Russia as it continues to struggle under the West’s crippling economic sanctions since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. In 2023, Russia and China’s bilateral trade hit a record $240 billion, per Chinese customs data.
“Russia’s economy is suffering long-term setbacks, and the country is sealing its fate as China’s economic vassal,” CIA director William J. Burns wrote in an opinion article for Foreign Affairs in January.
To be sure, China has been trying to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. China has claimed to be neutral when it comes to the war in Ukraine.
In February 2023, China unveiled a 12-point peace plan, but that was rejected by Russia.
In July, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb told Bloomberg in an interview that Russia’s reliance on China means the Asian giant could end the Ukraine war if it wanted to.
“I argue that Russia is so dependent on China right now that one phone call from President Xi Jinping would solve this crisis,” Stubb told the outlet.
“If he were to say, ‘Time to start negotiating peace.’ Russia would be forced to do that. They would have no other choice,” he continued.
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