A long-time target of US and EU sanctions, Russia will soon face the menacing threat of new restrictions. On Monday, an agreement to impose new punitive measures gained the full support of 27 EU foreign ministers, following Franco-German accusations that Russian authorities were behind the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. If Russia has been a constant target of sanctions – not least since the 2014 Crimea crisis – for China, until recently it was an experience best forgotten. Most sanctions against China were imposed in response to the crackdown on Tiananmen protests in 1989. Other restrictions enacted in the 1990s and 2000s followed China’s alleged assistance for Pakistan, Iran and North Korea in the procurement of weapons of mass destruction. The novelty of the latest sanctions on Russia by the European Union and United States is that their aim is demonstrative rather than punitive. First, they were imposed without concrete evidence. The report by the chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), just states that the poisonous substance found in Navalny’s samples was “similar” to two Novichok chemicals . Russia has stressed that the report makes no reference to Moscow as a mastermind. Even though the OPCW report does not directly accuse Russia, and neither Germany nor France has yet provided evidence of Russian state involvement, a joint German-French communiqué states that “there is no other plausible explanation for Mr Navalny’s poisoning than a Russian involvement and responsibility”. Britain and the Netherlands have backed Berlin and Paris. Such bellicose rhetoric speaks of a prejudiced view. In recent years, China has again come under the radar of US and EU sanctions. In 2018, the US tightened its export controls and investment restrictions over technology transfer concerns. Then the US Department of Commerce blacklisted China’s ZTE Corp. Last year, the US shifted its attention to another Chinese hi-tech giant, Huawei , which became the impact site of the US sanctions cudgel with its appearance on the so-called US Entity List. The trade war launched in 2018 by US President Donald Trump can also be classified as a sanctioning measure, since it uses artificial trade barriers to punish Beijing for unfair practices and technology transfers. US may sanction banks doing business with those linked to Hong Kong crackdown The other examples are the US and the EU’s punitive measures against Beijing over its adoption of the Hong Kong national security law as well as human rights violations following a crackdown on the Uygur Muslim minority in Xinjiang . Much of the evidence is based on leaked documents and rights groups’ data. The measures are limited in impact and mainly target individuals. Thus their true aim may be to show resentment, rather than fight against a state structure with full-fledged restrictions that could, eventually, damage the interests of EU and US businesses. In August this year, the US, for the first time, resorted to the Entity List as a countermeasure against Chinese activities in the South China Sea. In addition to companies, individuals somehow involved in reclamation or the construction of Chinese outposts in the disputed territory would also be punished. Furthermore, in early October, the US decided to sanction all Chinese Communist Party members by banning them from permanent residency or citizenship in America – a sign that the ideological confrontation between Beijing and Washington, initiated by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s thorny rebukes of the Communist Party, was heating up. In this sanctions sabre-rattling, China and Russia have also sometimes been treated as a joint target. In 2018, the US sanctioned a key unit of the Chinese military under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), for transacting with Russia’s defence sector. In July this year, Russia and China were both targeted in the EU’s first-ever cybersecurity sanctions , including a travel ban and assets freeze for several entities and individuals. China, Russia declare war on US dollar dominance In mid-September, Trump again called on the UN to hold China accountable for the coronavirus pandemic, which suggests more sanctions are on the way for China. Trump’s references to Covid-19 as the “Wuhan virus” are attempts to blame Beijing for the pandemic. Such sanctions contradict international law, as only the UN Security Council can impose legitimate restrictions on states. By introducing sanctions following Navalny’s poisoning in Russia or China’s actions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, the US and EU have opened a Pandora’s box – intervening in sovereign affairs and diverting dialogue from internationally set standards towards the deadlock of sanction threats. Russia and China treat such encroachments as interference in their domestic affairs. China, in responding to its sanctions, is trying to avoid a nosedive of already strained relations with the US amid a slow economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. But Beijing’s readiness to play hard ball can be seen in its recent formalisation of its own Unreliable Entity List , previously used as a purely protective mechanism to limit foreign access to its domestic market. In jointly targeting Russia and China in their sanctions, the US and EU merely push the two countries closer together, which may lead to a more collaborative approach when preparing countermeasures. Beijing and Moscow have already expanded their cooperation to new realms such as in the “ information war ”, cybersecurity and global finance . If Western powers stick with the language of unilateral sanctions, they may just witness the emergence of a new area of Sino-Russia cooperation. Danil Bochkov is an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council