BEIJING, November 24. /TASS/. China is strongly against the US’ unilateral sanctions against Nord Stream 2 and considers them a manifestation of US hegemony, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Wednesday.

"We are against the politicization of commercial projects, against unilateral sanctions. <...> Such US actions are pure hegemonism which tramples on the essential norms of international law," he said at a briefing.

According to the Chinese diplomat, Washington is using a pretext to resolve the international issues of a business agenda exclusively for its own benefit, completely dismissing the interests of other countries. "Such actions, undoubtedly, will elicit a protest from the global community," the spokesman emphasized.

As US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said at a briefing on Tuesday, the US intends to continue introducing sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which the US side considers "a Russian geopolitical project" and "a bad deal" for Europe and Ukraine.

On Tuesday, the US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on the Cyprus-based company Transadria and the Russian-flagged vessel Marlin. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, commenting on an earlier statement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, called the possible new restrictions by US on Nord Stream 2 unlawful.

The Russian side repeatedly emphasized that Nord Stream 2 was an exclusively commercial project and was being implemented jointly with European partners. Putin’s press secretary expressed bewilderment by the attempts of a number of countries to determine the fate of a gas pipeline by politically motivated circumstances. Moscow also repeatedly stated that it had never used energy resources as an instrument of pressure.