Beijing and Washington’s latest tit-for-tat measures could test ties, but observers say they are little more than a “speed bump” on the road to a potential summit between presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
China’s Ministry of Commerce sanctioned seven US entities and tightened export controls on drones and related technologies on Wednesday, citing the need to “safeguard national security”.
The ministry separately launched a national security investigation into imported printing and copying office equipment with foreign-made software.
The measures are a response to Washington’s move last week to add 43 Chinese companies to its Uygur Forced Labour Prevention Act entity list. In the same week, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also banned the import and sale of new foreign-made robotic devices and power inverters, sectors in which China is a global leader.
The retaliatory measures came ahead of Xi’s planned visit to Washington in September. The two countries are seeking to stabilise ties following a landmark summit between the two leaders in Beijing in May.
Dominic Chiu, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group risk advisory firm, said the latest Chinese move would heighten tensions but not derail Xi’s visit. He said Beijing’s measures were “calibrated to impose costs without breaking the truce”.
Beijing’s response signalled its willingness to escalate in a targeted way to deter Washington from rolling out further measures but at the same time indicated its willingness to engage and de-escalate, he said.
“The summit is still seven to eight weeks away so both sides have ample time to stabilise the relationship. The summit is at risk only if Washington takes more aggressive steps, such as restricting Chinese AI models or cloud chip access,” he said.
David Arase, resident professor of international politics at the Hopkins-Nanjing Centre, a joint US-China institution, said: “The latest US sanctions and the Chinese response are not much more than a speed bump on the way to a Xi-Trump summit this [autumn].”
Trump earlier said he had invited Xi to the White House on September 24. Last month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the visit remained on track.
One source told the South China Morning Post that Washington had expected the Chinese countermeasures, and that both sides anticipated such tit-for-tat moves to continue without affecting the summit, unless there were US actions related to Taiwan.
In announcing the countermeasures on Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said the move was “restrained overall” as it urged the US to immediately withdraw its measures and warned of further retaliation.
Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said the Chinese measures were likely to “heat up economic, trade and tech friction” but remained targeted “rather than an attempt to broadly escalate confrontation”.
“China’s characterisation of its measures as restrained reflects an intent to establish equivalent costs, rather than to immediately sever trade ties,” he said.
“As a result, these measures will worsen the political atmosphere ahead of the summit and make working-level negotiations harder for both sides, but they’re not yet enough to shake the plans for Xi’s September visit to the US and the leaders’ meeting.”
He added that the summit was precisely the mechanism for managing accumulating friction, suggesting that Xi’s trip would only be thrown off course by a “continuous cycle of both sides adding more measures”.
“What could genuinely trigger a reassessment [of the summit] is major action that touches the other side’s core security interests, macroeconomic stability or top-level political credibility,” Sun said.
This could include the US imposing curbs on China’s advanced chips or AI models ahead of the summit, or secondary sanctions on major Chinese technology firms.
Arase added that the summit was likely to be called off if the Trump administration approved the pending US$14 billion arms sales package to Taiwan – Beijing has repeatedly warned that doing so would cross its “red line” of strategic tolerance.
Calls in the US for the package to be approved have grown louder in recent days.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China and has not renounced the use of force to reunite it with the mainland. The US, like most countries, does not recognise self-governed Taiwan as an independent state, but is opposed to any attempt to take the island by force and is legally committed to supplying it with weapons.
“The summit’s fate ultimately hinges on whether both sides can hold back their most aggressive options for the next two months,” Chiu said.
Specific retaliatory measures aside, Sun cautioned that a breakdown in communication, compounded by misjudgment on either side, could be even more dangerous.
“If one side misreads the other’s countermeasures as a strategic showdown and responds with even larger measures, that could set off mutual escalation,” he said.
“Whether the summit goes ahead smoothly will depend on whether, over the coming weeks, both sides can maintain a basic rhythm of retaliating without crossing the line.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
