Hitting back at the United States for their trade war, China is borrowing from the US Playbook
Washington (AP) – China likes to condemn the United States for extending its arm too far outside its borders to make demands on non-evangelical companies. But when it sought to hit US ambitions this month, Beijing did the same.
In expanding export regulations to the exotic world, Beijing has for the first time announced it will require foreign firms to obtain permission from the Chinese government to export figures containing Chinese-made or manufactured with Chinese technology.
That means the South Korean smartphone maker must seek Beijing’s permission to sell the devices in Australia if the phones contain Chinese-rejected global materials, said Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative. “This law basically gives China control over the entire technology economy in a technology case,” he said.
For anyone familiar with US trade practice, China is simply borrowing a decades-long US policy: direct regulation of foreign products. It extends the reach of US law to products made overseas, and has often been used to protect China’s access to certain US technology made outside the United States, even if it is in the hands of foreign companies.
It is the latest example of Beijing turning to the hands of the US the tools it needs to look to Washington in what is seen as the world’s two biggest trade war.
“China is learning the best,” said Neil Thomas, another fellow on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Center. “Beijing is copying Washington’s PlayBook because it saw firsthand that export controls can effectively coerce economic development and political decisions.”
He added: “The game sees the game.”
The concept returns at least in 2018
It was in 2018, when President Donald Trump launched a trade war with China, those courts felt the urgency to adopt a set of laws and policies that appear easily when new trade disputes arise. And it looked to Washington for ideas.
Its dodgy business list, established in 2020 by China’s Ministry of Commerce, is similar to the US Commerce Department’s list of organizations that ban certain foreign companies from doing business with the US
In 2021, Beijing adopted an anti-trafficking law, allowing organizations such as the Chinese foreign service to deny visas and seize the assets of inadmissible people and businesses – similar to what the US Department of State and the US Department of Labor and the US Department of Labor do.
Calling it a ToolKit in fighting with other countries, intervention and long-arm agency, the country’s running agency China News Report points to an ancient Chinese doctrine, which says that Beijing will have to “hit back and the enemy’s methods.”
The law was “integrated with the relevant laws of other countries and carefully considered international law and the basic principles of foreign relations,” said Chinese scholar Li Qingming as quoted in a news report. He also said that it could prevent the other side from growing.
Other legal measures Beijing has adopted over the past several years include export controls and external review tools.
Jeremy Daum, a senior research scholar at the Paul Tsai China Law and Others, said Beijing often draws on foreign models to formulate its laws in trade-related areas. Since China is looking for the ability to reciprocate with trade and at the end, the tools are often very similar to those of the US, he said.
Both governments also embrace a “holistic view of national security,” which extends the concept to justify restrictions on each other, Daum said.
Things have accelerated this year
When Trump started his trade war with China shortly after returning to the White House earlier this year, Beijing easily deployed its new tools in addition to raising tariffs in line with the US President.
In February, in response to the first 10% tax of 10% in China for allegations that Beijing has failed to reduce the flow of chemicals used to make Fentanyl, Calmnin Klefiger and Tommin Hilfiger and the Biotechnology Company, on the list of untrustworthy organizations.
That prevented them from engaging in China-related or export-related activities and from making new money in the country. Beijing has also announced export controls on Tungsten, Tellurium, Bismuth, Molybdenum and Indium, which are essential to the production of today’s high-tech products.
In March, when Trump put 10% of the 10%, Bentanyl-related money, Bentanyl related to US Firms in their list of untrustworthy organization and included general aromatics companies, saying that “the national security of the US, endangers the Chinese state of China.”
Then came the so-called “Liberation Day” in April, when Beijing not only matched Trump’s 125% higher tariffs but also rolled back more US companies and announced export controls on exotic goods. That led to a temporary shift in the distribution of magnets needed in the manufacture of various products such as smartphones, electric cars, jet planes and missiles.
While the new tools have allowed China to target the United States, Daum said they are not without risks.
“The dangers in such a balanced and fair approach, one, which one side sees as reconciliation, the other can interpret as escalation,” he said. Second, “in a race to the bottom, no one wins.”
