Sanctions with Chinese Characteristics: Rhetoric and Restraint in China's Diplomacy

This book represents the first large-scale study of China's approach to sanctions. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 76 current and former politicians, policy-makers, diplomats, and commercial actors from across twelve countries and sixteen cities, it analyses the ways in which China has employed sanctions to further its political objectives, and the factors that have influenced such strategies. It provides a systematic account of how Chinese decision-makers have dealt with sanctions both at the United Nations Security Council and unilaterally. In doing so, it demonstrates how China's longstanding sanctions rhetoric has had a constraining effect on its actions, resulting in an inability to employ sanctions in such a way as to be in complete alignment with its immediate interests. This, the author argues, explains why China was relatively restrained in its use of coercive economic measures until the end of Xi Jinping's first term in March 2018, despite its reputation for increasing assertiveness.