Protecting U.S. Allies and Partners from Chinese Economic Coercion

Elliott Abrams Ezra Hess and Joshua Kurlantzick

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Even as China’s economy faces massive domestic problems, from sluggish consumer demand to industrial overcapacity, its leadership, headed by the increasingly assertive and nationalistic Xi Jinping, has continued a strategy of applying intense economic coercion to countries it feels have disregarded China’s major interests.

As the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and others have noted, Beijing usually applies economic coercion—while consistently denying it is doing so—when it feels its core interests in international relations are threatened. Those core interests can sometimes be blurry, but tend to encompass

• isolating Taiwan from the world;
• ensuring that China is not deprived of what it needs to continue long-term economic growth;
• preventing other states from threatening the power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), for example, through criticism of its human rights record and authoritarianism;
• preventing threats to China’s security, as in the case of states, particularly in Asia, signing new defense arrangements with the United States or agreeing to play larger roles in patrolling the South China Sea; and
• delivering a message to the world that China acts peacefully in international affairs.