China has prepared powerful countermeasures against American companies in case of an escalation of the trade standoff with the United States under the new administration of Donald Trump. This was reported by the Financial Times (FT) newspaper, citing sources.
According to the publication, Beijing was not prepared for the drastic steps taken by the White House during Trump’s first term in office — the introduction of higher tariffs, tighter controls on investments, and sanctions against Chinese companies. However, over the past eight years, China has adopted decisive legislative measures that “allow it to blacklist foreign companies, impose sanctions on them, and restrict America’s access to critical supply chains,” the publication says.
China now has the Foreign Sanctions Counteraction Act, which allows it to fight back against measures taken by other countries, as well as a “list of unreliable organizations” abroad that undermine national interests. The provisions regulating the export of dual-use goods were introduced in response to the actions of “some foreign countries and organizations” that “use various pretexts related to Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan to denigrate, attack and distort China’s development, and seek to contain and suppress it.”
“This is a two-way process. China will, of course, try to interact with President Trump in any way possible, and will try to negotiate,” the publication quotes Wang Dong, executive director of the Institute of Global Cooperation and Understanding at Peking University, as saying. “But if negotiations fail, as happened in 2018, and we have to fight, we will resolutely protect China’s rights and interests.”