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• The country does not consider Moscow's attack on Ukraine an invasion
• China is a significant customer of Russian oil and gas
China will not join the US and EU-led sanctions on Russia, and it will continue to make regular trade with Moscow, the country's banking and insurance regulator said on Wednesday.
"As far as financial sanctions are concerned, we do not approve of these, especially the unilaterally launched sanctions because they do not work well and have no legal grounds," Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, told a news conference, Reuters quoted.
China opposes the use of sanctions to address problems and is even more averse to unilateral penalties that have no legal basis.
"We will not participate in such sanctions. We will continue to maintain normal economic and trade exchanges with relevant parties," Shuqing said.
China is a significant customer of Russian oil and gas, and it is the only major country that has not condemned Moscow's aggression against Ukraine.
Guo, the Chinese Communist Party's secretary at China's central bank, said that he hopes all parties maintain regular economic relations and that the sanctions have so far had no impact on China.
"The impact from the sanctions on China's economy and financial sector is so far not too significant," Shuqing said.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, countries throughout the globe-imposed sanctions on the Russian government, corporations, financial institutions, and high-profile people.
The United States placed several Russian persons and financial entities on the Specially Designated Nationals list last week. It prohibits American corporations and individuals from doing business with anybody on the list.
The US, UK, Europe, and Canada imposed further sanctions against Russia, including the denial of access to the SWIFT international payment system to put pressure on Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine.
Inputs from Reuters
Picture Credits: Al Jazeera