China has passed a sweeping foreign policy law that bolts together a slew of existing tools to counter Western powers, and extends Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) combative stance on asserting Beijing globally.
Enacted with the stated intention of safeguarding China’s national security and development interests, the Law on Foreign Relations is to come into force today and stops short of creating new mechanisms for responding to rising geopolitical challenges, such as US-led export controls on advanced technology.
Instead, the umbrella legislation gives Beijing’s existing toolkit more weight by embracing it in a legal document alongside two of Xi’s signature foreign policy initiatives.
Photo: AFP
The Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative are baked into the law, approved by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Wednesday.
The US has singled out a range of Chinese companies and officials with sanctions, accusing them of involvement in human rights abuses that China denies.
In October last year, US President Joe Biden’s administration tightened restrictions on US microchip exports to China — controls that the Biden administration is considering strengthening.
China is refusing to resume high-level communication with US armed forces until Washington lifts sanctions on Chinese Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu (李尚福).
Although the law is directed at government agencies, it states that the conduct of foreign relations falls under the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership.
Xi has increased the party’s grip on government bodies in recent years as he consolidates power in the world’s second-largest economy.
The law is “an important measure to strengthen the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee’s centralized and unified leadership over foreign affairs,” Chinese Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Wang Yi (王毅) wrote on Thursday in an editorial in party mouthpiece the People’s Daily.
Zhao Suisheng (趙穗生), a professor in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, said that the document is more like Xi’s foreign policy declaration than new legislation.
“It’s a personalization of Chinese foreign policy through a legal process,” Zhao said.
The law “makes so clear that the party is in charge of foreign policy, and the foreign ministry and State Council is the implementing institution,” he said.
Xi has for years struggled to find a response to US sanctions, tariffs and export controls that makes China look tough without scaring off foreign companies.
Although Beijing has developed an “unreliable entity list,” an anti-foreign sanctions law and Hong Kong’s National Security Law, its provisions to punish people for complying with foreign sanctions have not been used to any meaningful degree.
Beijing’s decision earlier this year to put Lockheed Martin Corp and a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies Corp on the entity list was largely symbolic: The two US defense contractors do not have significant business in China.
China’s most meaningful action came in May, when it banned domestic operators of key infrastructure from buying Micron Technology Inc’s products, a cautious move as replacements for the company’s memory chips are easily sourced from local suppliers.
Beijing has also sanctioned individuals, including former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, in recent years who have few, if any, ties to the Chinese economy.
Further signaling the challenges facing Xi in responding to US curbs, China’s top legislative body has postponed a proposal to impose an anti-sanctions law on Hong Kong.
Business leaders in the region raised concerns that the law could allow Beijing to seize assets from entities that implement US sanctions. Financial institutions in Hong Kong rely on the US dollar and comply with Washington’s economic measures.
Beijing has similarly avoided contravening US sanctions over Russia’s war in Ukraine, wary of a backlash on its economy and companies.
The law does not offer any new solutions or tools for these problems. It states that China has the right to take “countermeasures and restrictive measures” against acts that endanger the country’s sovereignty, security and development interests, and violate international laws or “basic norms of international relations.”
It calls on state agencies charged with executing Xi’s vision to strengthen interdepartmental coordination and cooperation to enforce the retaliatory measures.
The State Council, which coordinates China’s government ministries, is authorized to “establish related working institutions.”
The legislation has other clauses, some of which echo existing regulations. It requires foreign nationals and organizations in China not to endanger the country’s national security, undermine social and public interests or disrupt social and public order.
“Foreign businesses do not have clarity on what is officially considered a national secret,” the European Chamber of Commerce in China said.
“Laws that are vaguely worded and broad in scope present compliance challenges, and can also result in discretionary implementation, which is not conducive to attracting foreign investment or rebuilding business confidence among the foreign business community in China,” it said.
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