The U.S. is thinking about imposing sanctions on China to stop Taiwan from acting, and Taiwan is asking the EU to do the same.
Written by Ben Blanchard, Yimou Lee, John O’Donnell, Alexandra Alper, and Trevor Hunnicutt
Taipei/Frankfurt/Washington
Sources familiar with the talks say that the United States is considering options for a package of sanctions against China to stop it from invading Taiwan. Taipei is diplomatically pressuring the European Union to do the same, and the EU is also thinking about it.
The sources said that both the talks in Washington and Taipei’s lobbying of EU envoys were in their early stages. This was done in response to growing fears of a Chinese invasion as military tensions in the Taiwan Strait rise.
In both cases, the goal is to put more restrictions on trade and investment with China in sensitive technologies like computer chips and telecommunications equipment than what has already been done in the West.
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Sources did not say what is being thought about in detail, but the idea of putting sanctions on the world’s second-largest economy and one of the biggest links in the global supply chain raises questions about whether it is possible.
A former senior U.S. Commerce Department official, Nazak Nikakhtar, said that putting sanctions on China would be much harder than putting sanctions on Russia because the U.S. and its allies are so tied to the Chinese economy.
China says that Taiwan is its own land. Last month, when U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to Taipei, which Beijing saw as a provocation, China fired missiles over the island and sent warships across their unofficial sea border.
President Xi Jinping of China has promised to bring democratic Taiwan under Beijing’s control by any means necessary, including force. At a Communist Party meeting next month, he will get a third five-year term as leader. China says that it owns Taiwan, but Taiwan’s government strongly disagrees with this.
In response to the news about the sanctions package, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry in Beijing said that people shouldn’t underestimate China.
Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese government, said on Wednesday, “I want to stress that no country or person should underestimate the strong determination and firm will of the Chinese government and people to defend national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and realise the reunification of the motherland.”
A U.S. official and an official from a country that works closely with the U.S. said that officials in Washington are looking at different options for a possible package of sanctions against China. The goal is to stop Xi from trying to invade Taiwan.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the U.S. started talking about sanctions, but the Chinese response to Pelosi’s visit gave the talks a new sense of urgency, the two sources said.
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In January, the US and its NATO allies took a similar approach to Russia by threatening unspecified sanctions. However, this did not stop Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.
The non-U.S. official said that the White House is trying to get everyone on the same page. This includes coordinating between Europe and Asia and not upsetting Beijing.
Reuters wasn’t able to find out what specific sanctions were being thought about, but some analysts said they might be aimed at China’s military.
Craig Singleton at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said, “In the big picture, the first talks about sanctions will probably be about limiting China’s access to certain technologies it needs to run a military operation against Taiwan.”
The White House didn’t say anything.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it had talked to the U.S., Europe, and other like-minded countries about China’s recent war games and the “great challenges” China poses to Taiwan and the region, but it couldn’t say more about what was said.
PITCH FROM TAIWAN TO EUROPE
Taiwan had already talked to European officials about sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine, but China’s recent military exercises have made Taiwan’s position stronger, according to six sources familiar with the talks between Taiwan and Europe and who spoke to Reuters.
In the past few weeks, calls from top Taiwanese officials for preparations for sanctions have grown louder. In a recent White Paper, China broke a promise not to send troops or officials to Taiwan if Beijing took control of the island. This has caused them to work harder with Europe.
One person with knowledge of the talks said that Taiwan hasn’t asked for anything specific. Instead, it has asked Europe to plan what it might do if China attacked, and it has also asked Europe to privately warn China that it would face consequences.
So far, EU officials have been reluctant to impose tough sanctions on China over human rights issues because China is much more important to the bloc’s economy than Russia, said another person with knowledge of the situation.
For European sanctions to work, all 27 member countries would have to agree, which isn’t always easy. Even isolating Russia after its invasion of Ukraine was hard, in part because Germany needed its gas.
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All of Europe, except for the Vatican, has diplomatic ties with Beijing but not with Taipei, sources say. However, Taiwanese and European officials have had a lot of private contact since China started its military exercises.
Another official who knows about the discussion said that Germany, which is the economic engine of the bloc, is “wary.” “I don’t think the Russia-Ukraine conflict has made a big difference in how they see their relationship with China.”
But the German government is getting more worried about how much of its economy depends on China. On Tuesday, the economy minister promised a new trade policy and “no more naivety.”
A representative for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz didn’t want to say anything.
