The People’s Republic of China is rapidly constructing a new regime for economic and diplomatic sanctions. With its Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law (AFSL) and related legislation, Beijing has taken a step towards legally formalizing the means of pressure it uses against states, organizations, or individuals seen as threatening its core interests. Meanwhile, various informal coercive measures also continue to be employed. While questions remain about their scope and future uses, Beijing has especially extolled AFSL sanctions as countermeasures to U.S. interference.
This Article undertakes a detailed examination of the new Chinese sanctions framework, its historical origins, and its role in Beijing’s broader construction of what it calls “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. An overview of the modern history of China’s informal sanctions (ranging from boycotts to disguised trade restrictions) contextualizes the emerging regime as but the latest step in a general pattern of convergence in uses of economic pressure by China and the United States, which predates the AFSL. In turn, this dynamic of imitation and socialization in sanctions usage may indicate a phenomenon of “mimetic unilateralism,” in which acts of coercion are used less to pursue specific rational aims than as performative indicia of great power status. While the concrete effects of unilateral coercive measures may vary, they nonetheless serve to inhibit more productive forms of engagement.
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