Immediately after the topic of “Chinese guilt in the Coronavirus epidemic” began to dominate American political discourse, we predicted that it would end with U.S. sanctions against China, and this is the scenario now being prepared by senior senators and congressmen of the Republican Party of the United States. A bill that will give the president the opportunity to impose sanctions against China for the COVID-19 epidemic, and this bill has every chance of being negotiated in both houses of the American Parliament.
Specialized edition The Hill clarifies the Jesuit language of what exactly the U.S. is going to “punish” China for:
“Republican senators presented on Tuesday a bill allowing President Trump to impose sanctions on China for its refusal to cooperate in investigations into the origin of the coronavirus. The “COVID-19 Liability Bill”, – introduced by Senator Lindsay Graham, will authorize Trump to sanction China if the country does not cooperate with investigations conducted by the U.S., U.S. allies or organizations working under the auspices of the United Nations”.
China is trying to put the country in a desperate situation. According to the plan of the authors of the sanctions bill, official Beijing should choose between colossal national humiliation in the form of recognition that the U.S. has the right to investigate the actions of the Chinese authorities and active cooperation with the U.S. investigators (and investigators of the U.S. satellite countries up to some Estonia) – and preservation of national dignity, which will be immediately used to impose sanctions and statements that, since Beijing refuses to humiliate itself in front of the U.S. investigators, it is precisely “hidden”.
By the way, the “truth” itself does not interest the authors of sanctions measures at all, as they were not interested in the truth in the context of their efforts to impose “hellish sanctions” against Russia. For example, a prominent Republican senator Lindsay Graham is both the author of several anti-Russian bills and the main proponent of sanctions against China, and assuming that in both cases the same standard will be used, Beijing has no chance to avoid sanctions.
The only thing that Chinese diplomacy can count on is to convince (with the help of direct and indirect threats) the Trump administration that imposing the toughest sanctions is a bad idea, i.e. one can count on Washington to try to apply all measures – except those that would seriously harm the American economy itself.
It is indicative that Republican senators are not hiding: the main purpose of their bill is to weaken the main element of China’s political and governance system represented by the Communist Party of China. An official statement by one of the authors of the bill leaves no doubt about it: “The continuing suppression of truth by the Communist Party of China in the face of a coronavirus outbreak cannot go unnoticed. This law will empower the president to take appropriate action against the Chinese government in order to avoid a recurrence of such outbreaks in the future.
It is also worth noting that, as in the case of anti-Russian sanctions, it is not really about expanding the foreign policy arsenal of the American president (as journalists are trying to present), but actually pushing Trump to impose sanctions in one form or another. According to the bill, immediately after it enters into force, the president “switches on the counter” – and 60 days later he must either announce to the U.S. Congress that China has made all possible concessions (including the release of “political prisoners”), or, conversely, tell Congress that China has not “bent”. Despite the fact that the bill does not require the president to impose sanctions, from the image point of view, the president will have no other choice, and if sanctions are imposed, the bill obliges him to choose at least two measures from a pre-prepared list.
It should also be noted that, as in the case of anti-Russian sanctions, it is not really about expanding the foreign policy arsenal of the American president (as journalists are trying to present), but actually pushing Trump to impose sanctions in one form or another. According to the bill, immediately after it enters into force, the president “switches on the counter” – and 60 days later he must either announce to the U.S. Congress that China has made all possible concessions (including the release of “political prisoners”), or, conversely, tell Congress that China has not “bent”. Despite the fact that the bill does not require the president to impose sanctions, from the image point of view, the president will have no other choice, and if sanctions are imposed, the bill obliges him to choose at least two measures from a pre-prepared list.
The list includes measures such as “asset freeze on certain Chinese officials”, “travel ban and visa revocation for certain Chinese officials”, “student visa ban on Chinese citizens”, “prohibition for any United States financial organization to lend or facilitate the offering of securities to Chinese companies or companies controlled by China”, instruction for U.S. diplomats to vote against the allocation of IMF and World Bank funds to Chinese entities, and a ban on listing on U.S. China exchanges.
It is not difficult to notice that the most aggressive of the sanctions options offered to the US president are copies of “hellish sanctions” against Russia or analogous sanctions that have already been imposed on some Russian companies. Personal sanctions against specific Chinese officials or businessmen are unlikely to make any serious impression on official Beijing, but the ban on U.S. banks lending to Chinese companies and the actual blocking of access by Chinese companies (and even companies with Chinese participation) to the U.S. stock market, through which a significant part of the global investment community operates, are already applications to inflict quite tangible (though not fatal) economic damage on leading Chinese companies.
The bill makes no mention of such a popular method of revenge against China among Republicans as default on U.S. bonds held by China in its foreign currency reserves, but this is not a sign of restraint on the part of the authors of the bill, but rather a technical difficulty: default of this kind is prohibited by the US Constitution, and it takes time and creative legislative work to get around this restriction. And the set of sanctions from the bill under discussion is already quite sufficient to unleash a really acute conflict between Washington and Beijing.
Judging by the reaction of the Chinese side to recent anti-Peking bills, including the bill that will allow American courts to consider lawsuits against the Chinese government to recover compensation for the epidemic, the authors of the bills are waiting for certain unpleasant consequences. As one expert interviewed by the state foreign policy publication Global Times points out, “We can’t just strike back symbolically, but have to apply countermeasures that can make them feel pain.
Judging by the proposals in the Global Times, the essence of countermeasures is to punish those states whose representatives in Congress and the Senate promote anti-Chinese sanctions with the deprivation of Chinese investment (and loss of existing jobs with Chinese money). This may prove to be a very effective approach, especially in the context of the economic crisis caused by the epidemic, but it is still difficult to escape the feeling that it is a temporary measure. Sooner or later, sanctions will be promoted and imposed by the U.S. president himself – and then we will have to look for a way to “hurt” the entire presidential administration and all the voters, which means that unleashing a total sanctions war is simply a matter of time and how quickly each side will have time to prepare effectively for it. American politicians probably believe that against the backdrop of the economic crisis no one will notice additional problems caused by the complete or partial severance of production and financial ties with China, but this is an erroneous expectation. Washington is used to thinking of itself as the center of the universe and perceiving presidential decrees as some kind of magic wand, but the problem is that the sanctions policy has a serious limitation: the US president may impose sanctions against China, Russia or Mars. However, in the case of a retaliatory Chinese embargo, for example, on basic medicines (which the U.S. has already forgotten to produce), the U.S. will have problems for which the Washington political elite is clearly not yet ready.
Ivan Danilov