Trade war clues sought in China’s ‘ambiguous’ new export control law
- China’s new export control draft law has removed references to ‘retaliation’, viewed by some as an effort to play down tensions with the United States
- However, most agree that the law is intentionally ambiguous, with power of reprisal remaining with China’s Ministry of Commerce
After Beijing lawmakers published a new draft of China’s incoming export control law, trade watchers were sifting through the “overwhelming lack of specificity” for any messaging on the trade war with the United States.
“This common theme of ambiguity and uncertainty is no accident and specifically designed to allow the government agencies flexibility and discretion in the implementation,” said James Zimmerman, a partner in the Beijing office of the US law firm Perkins Coie.
The draft is an update of a 2017 version, which caused a stir among foreign business groups in China due to language related to export control retaliation – a rare principle that does not exist in the export control regimes of the European Union or the US.
This common theme of ambiguity and uncertainty is no accident and specifically designed to allow the government agencies flexibility and discretion in the implementation
This would essentially have given China the bandwidth to respond to the sort of export controls used by Washington to cripple key Chinese companies such as Huawei, ZTE and Fujian Jinhua – three technology giants which have been choked from their US suppliers over the past two years – with export controls of its own.