Sino-American Sanctions Convergence?

Abstract

The People’s Republic of China has recently adopted new legislation covering the topic of sanctions. With its recent Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, Beijing has taken a step towards formalizing longstanding practices of informal economic pressure or coercion against states, firms, and individuals seen as threatening its sovereignty or core interests. It has often framed this initiative, meanwhile, as a response to sanctions placed on China by the United States and its allies. This Article undertakes a detailed examination of the new Chinese sanctions framework, its historical origins, and its role in Beijing’s broader construction of "foreign-related rule of law". It also argues that China's overall economic sanctions trajectory is ultimately best viewed less as "countering" U.S. practices than as an emulation of them.

As the latest episode in China's recent history of using economic coercion to assert national sovereignty and great power status, the new legislative regime appears to be informed by Washington's example in several respects. These include the specific measures empowered by the new law—such as asset freezes and designated entities lists—but also how the new regime leaves in place extensive administrative capacity for more comprehensive acts of coercion that are essentially left to Executive discretion. The convergence of China and the United States as sanctioners may suggest an emerging dynamic of “mimetic unilateralism”, in which major states use sanctions less to selectively impose costs and pursue specific rational aims than as a quotidian policy signal and one of the key indicia of 21st century great power status. We may, thus, be entering an era in which punitive economic measures play a greater role in the normative structure, or social imaginary, of world order.

Keywords: Economic sanctions, great power competition, legal history, Chinese economic coercion, mimetic theory, unilateralism

JEL Classification: F51, N15, N45, F52, F53