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The Diplomat
07-07-2025
- Business
- The Diplomat
The West Can't Survive the Sanctions It Needs to Deter China
The West still believes that sanctions signal resolve. China has already moved on to testing what happens when they don't. In the modern context, sanctions are supposed to act as a line of defense, measures designed to dissuade adversaries before a conflict even begins. But for sanctions to carry weight, they must be seen as viable: not just in concept, but in execution. At present, that foundation is unstable. While Western leaders continue to invoke unity and strength, the tools meant to apply real economic pressure are disjointed and prone to breakdown under strain. The mechanisms required to turn intent into credible action, coordinated enforcement, reliable escalation pathways, and the stamina to withstand domestic fallout, are either missing altogether or proving insufficient where they exist. The recent response to Russia illustrates this point. Sanctions were rolled out quickly, but their impact has been diluted by inconsistent implementation, a patchwork of legal frameworks, and the absence of long-term political consensus. Instead of a sustained front, we've seen a series of measures that lack follow-through and coherence. Recent reporting by the New York Times highlighted a lack of new U.S. sanctions on Russia under the second Donald Trump administration. What was meant to project strength has instead revealed systemic vulnerability: goods still move through loopholes, enforcement lags, and even allied governments backpedal when domestic costs begin to rise. China, in watching all this unfold, is learning exactly where the West's thresholds lie, and what the United States and its partners are willing to tolerate in practice. The New York Times found that more than 130 companies in mainland China and Hong Kong 'are advertising immediate sales of restricted computer chips to Russia.' None of the companies found making such advertisements is under sanctions, illustrating the weakness of the existing sanctions regime. The implication is clear: unless sanctions can be made to function as a credible deterrent – fast, coordinated, and capable of weathering both blowback and changing political tides – they will remain tools of symbolic outrage rather than instruments of strategic prevention. What China Has Learned From the West China has not watched the West's response to Russia passively. It has studied it closely. What Beijing has absorbed isn't limited to what the sanctions covered, but how slowly they were implemented, how unevenly they were enforced, and how easily they were sidestepped. The obvious conclusion is that the Western alliance lacks the collective readiness, institutional durability, and enforcement cohesion to sustain economic warfare at scale. China has treated this gap as a design problem and moved to solve it. It is not just Central Asia where Beijing has laid groundwork for sanctions resistance. It's Mozambique, Angola, Kenya and others. Across the African coastlines, Chinese-financed ports, nominally commercial, have become dual-use infrastructure, optimized for logistics that operate outside the reach of Western compliance regimes. These are policy hedges: fully legal, fully operational, and ready for repurposing should the need arise. What matters more than geography is intent. China isn't just building trade routes; it's pressure-testing them. The logistics flowing through Africa, Central Asia, and the Gulf aren't improvised; they're structured to adapt. If one corridor closes, another flexes open. Rather than a workaround, this is a system designed to endure disruption. What's emerged is not a shadow network, but a parallel system free of geographical bounds. If a corridor in Central Asia gets too hot, another opens along the Indian Ocean. If financial rails in Europe tighten, renminbi clearing centers in the Gulf or sub-Saharan banks pick up the volume. This quiet scaffolding has a second layer: narrative resilience. China has watched Russia's aura of invincibility unravel, not because Ukraine overwhelmed its forces in the field, but because the myth of dominance eroded on contact. A few drones, a few sabotage campaigns, and the image cracked. Beijing knows its deterrence posture over Taiwan is built on the same kind of illusion. But reputation doesn't survive first contact unless the system behind it can hold. And so, the real test China is preparing for isn't how to absorb a missile strike. It's how to withstand an economic onslaught – with concrete, physical infrastructure already in place. From transshipment ports to re-export chains to commodity barter networks, China is shaping a world where sanctions arrive too slowly and bite too late. If deterrence depends on the credibility of economic retaliation, China sees little reason to believe it's something the West can deliver in time, or sustain once it does. What looked like global coordination in 2022 has aged into a cautionary tale. Beijing took notes. And those notes are being written into logistics policy, procurement strategy, and foreign investment portfolios. The West still believes that sanctions signal resolve. China has already moved on to testing what happens when they don't. Where the West Breaks Down For sanctions to deter, they must be more than declarative. They must be implementable. That requires cohesion, enforcement, and the political will to endure costs. The West is faltering across each axis. The initial sanctions against Russia created the appearance of unity, but that perception did not survive operational scrutiny. The United States moved fast, targeting financial systems and state assets. But Europe, despite its rhetoric, remained hostage to its own dependencies. Natural gas, refined oil, and dual-use trade routes continued operating, sometimes with superficial tweaks. Firms headquartered in the United Kingdom underwrote and shipped liquefied natural gas shipments even as London loudly condemned Moscow. Diplomatically, the West congratulated itself on unity. But logistics told a different story. Russian crude still moved. Technology still arrived. Foreign currency flowed through shadow structures and mirrored financial networks. The sanctions didn't stop the machine; they forced it underground. And in doing so, they revealed the real weakness: Western policy coherence breaks when economic sacrifice enters the room. Even more troubling is the West's enforcement infrastructure. It is fragmented, jurisdictionally diluted, and woefully reliant on private sector compliance. Export control regimes function on checklists, not intent. Sanctions regimes target entities, not ecosystems. Goods flow because no one is watching closely enough to connect the dots between a component sold in Denmark and a missile silo in Yasny. This is an issue of bureaucratic fragmentation. Export control in the European Union is not centralized. The EU sets the rules, but each member state enforces them on its own. That's led to a patchwork of national systems, with uneven thresholds, timelines, and oversight. In the U.S., responsibility is split across the Treasury, Commerce, and State Departments, with no unified standard and different tolerances depending on the agency. The U.K. has an aggressive rhetorical posture but little appetite for financial disruption. The enforcement system is built on declarations, not interdiction. Some governments have taken limited steps to plug these holes. Secondary sanctions have been discussed. Legal thresholds for maritime insurance have been debated. But these measures always seem to arrive too late, and in diluted form. The overarching pattern is not one of negligence, but of strategic risk-aversion. Everyone wants sanctions to work. No one wants to be responsible for the costs. The problem is compounded by Western political culture. Sanctions are deployed in democracies that are increasingly intolerant of sustained sacrifice. Gasoline prices spike, and the political debate shifts from foreign accountability to domestic affordability. Voters expect moral clarity with economic impunity. That contradiction is not sustainable. Nor is it lost on adversaries. Recent signals from U.S. President Donald Trump indicate that sanctions could be lifted as part of a future ceasefire negotiation with Russia. That notion is dangerous; it confirms that the West cannot even guarantee its own commitment to punishment. Once sanctions are perceived as temporary or negotiable, their deterrent effect collapses. If that happens, we should expect the circumvention pathways currently running from China through Central Asia into Russia to reverse. Russia will become the supplier. The infrastructure is already in place. The reversal won't require new policy, just political inertia. If China sees sanctions as survivable, if it sees the West fracture before enforcement even begins, then any deterrent function is lost. The cost calculus changes. An assault on Taiwan becomes not a question of risk, but of cost absorption. And in Beijing's internal risk modeling, that shift is everything. Sanctions against Russia weren't just fragmented; they were sequenced in ways that allowed for adaptation. Moscow learned where the seams were, and reinforced them. China won't get that learning curve. If deterrence is to work, sanctions must be immediate, comprehensive, and pre-aligned before the first move. What Must Be Built to Survive Sanctions Deployment Sanctions cannot deter unless they are backed by structures capable of instant deployment and durable enforcement. But structure alone is not enough. What the West needs is a different mindset, one that sees sanctions not as symbolic gestures or policy options, but as a warfighting domain. Institutional coordination must be pre-negotiated. Allies need unified response frameworks that remove the lag between outrage and action. Sanctions should not require months of debate. They should trigger automatically upon threshold breaches. Building that kind of system will take political will and legal creativity, but without it, deterrence is just for show. Enforcement must be elevated to a strategic priority. That means not only harmonizing export controls, but embedding real-time detection into trade and financial networks. The technology exists. What's lacking is mandate. Intelligence agencies must work alongside trade ministries. Customs inspections must integrate with sanction monitoring tools. Interdiction must become normal, not exceptional. Perhaps most crucially, political leadership must prepare their populations for the reality of economic disruption. Deterrence does not come cheap. It must be paid for with volatility, discomfort, and sacrifice. Western electorates have grown accustomed to painless power projection. That era is over. If sanctions are to hold, public communication must change. Politicians will have to explain not just the why of sanctions, but the cost. Not everyone will accept it. But if leaders are unwilling to speak to it, deterrence has no chance. None of this is optional. China is modeling the West's failures, preparing for sanctions the way it would prepare for conflict. The West, by contrast, treats sanctions as a foreign policy sidebar. That asymmetry will prove decisive. When Deterrence Lives or Dies Before a Shot Is Fired China won't lead with tanks or missiles. It will begin with a question: how far will the West really go? Not in theory, not on paper, but in action, and cost. What Beijing is measuring isn't just the scale of potential sanctions. It's whether the political systems behind them are capable of withstanding their own decisions. Thus far, the West's track record offers little reassurance. The Western response to Russia has exposed enforcement gaps, reversals in resolve, and growing pressure to trade strategic aims for economic calm. For China, that's not just data, it's opportunity. Many of the vulnerabilities are already visible. Insurance markets underwrite adversary trade. Export systems still allow sensitive components to reach military sites. Legal frameworks are designed for demonstration, not durability. The symptoms differ, but they point to the same underlying condition: a deterrence doctrine that lacks structural reinforcement. Beijing is unlikely to risk a military conflict over Taiwan without first testing whether those same weak spots can be exploited again. And China knows that if the West can't absorb the initial shock of sanctions, if its economic lines fracture under pressure, then the entire strategy of containment becomes hollow. This isn't speculation. It's contingency planning. China is preparing for the economic blowback long before the shooting starts. If it sees the West blink in that first test, if sanctions unravel, dilute, or get bargained away, then escalation becomes far more manageable. The task now is infrastructural. Deterrence must be built, not simply declared. And it must be built to hold under stress, legal, financial, and political. That means moving beyond statements of intent toward enforceable alignment, pre-coordinated architecture, and a public that understands the stakes. Because once deterrence breaks, there is no easy reset. By the time the West finds itself responding to an invasion, it will be too late to design the economic shield it should have had in place all along. And the cost of that oversight will arrive swiftly, and with consequences far beyond Taiwan.
Business Recorder
04-06-2025
- Business
- Business Recorder
China exports more solar panels to Pakistan than to many G20 nations in 5 years: report
China exported more solar panels to Pakistan than to many G20 nations, with over 16 gigawatts (GW) imported in 2024 alone, a research report stated on Wednesday. The report titled 'Leader of One or Leader of None - China's Choice for Clean over Coal in Pakistan' published by think tank Renewables First said more than 39GW of solar panels, nearly all from China, entered Pakistan in just five years. These solar panels are 'enough to exceed three-quarters of Pakistan's installed national generation capacity', the report said. The report unpacked this transformation, highlighting China's role in the Global South. 'The exit of the United States from the Paris Agreements threw international climate action into a state of frenzy, with the world left speculating who, if anyone, might step in to lead the efforts against climate change,' it said. From crisis to clean energy: Pakistan emerges as top solar market in 2024 China is now a global powerhouse in clean energy manufacturing. It is supplying tools in the form of renewable energy technologies that much of the world is using to fight climate change, according to the report. There has been an energy shift in Pakistan in the form of what the think tank called a 'Solar Rush', which is driven 'not by government declarations or boardroom decisions, but by rooftops, farms, and factory sheds'. The report demystified the 'Solar Rush', dissecting how one of the world's fastest-growing, people-led solar markets materialised not through grand strategy, but through open competition, favorable trade policy, and a flood of low-priced technology. Yet as solar thrived, coal investments began turning into high-risk assets, with the country still hosting billions of dollars in Chinese-financed coal-fired power plants, the report said. As solar slashed grid demand and made self-generation more viable, these legacy plants, once seen as anchors of energy security, have began to sink. 'Utilisation of these power plants fell to as low as 4% in some projects by 2024. Capacity payments ballooned. And electricity from the grid grew more expensive for those still reliant on it,' the report. 'China's solar panels are outcompeting China's power plants,' said Muhammad Basit Ghauri, lead author of the report. 'What we are seeing is an unintentional but profound strategic contradiction. And Pakistan is ground zero for this global experiment in energy disruption.' Pakistan's solar revolution leaves its middle class behind With distributed solar now displacing centralised generation, Pakistan does not just need panels. It needs storage systems, grid upgrades, local manufacturing, financing tools, and a pathway to move away from stranded coal assets, the report said. 'Pakistan may be the first to experience this clash between legacy coal and democratised solar at this scale, but it will not be the last. If China gets this right, it will not just lead to Pakistan's energy transition. It will prove itself as the architect of a new Global South energy paradigm, one that is fast, fair, and truly transformative,' the report envisaged.
Nikkei Asia
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Nikkei Asia
Japanese minesweepers dock at controversial Cambodian naval base
REAM NAVAL BASE, Cambodia -- When the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force minesweepers JS Etajima and JS Bungo arrived at the Ream Naval Base in Cambodia on Saturday, it was the start of no ordinary port call. The vessels were the first to dock at the base since its official inauguration on April 5, following an extensive three-year Chinese-financed expansion, a fact that Cambodia hopes will go some way toward dispelling accusations that China would have exclusive access to the facility.
The Independent
21-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
A major new airport to serve Cambodia's capital and boost tourism is due to open in July
Cambodia expects that its new airport serving the capital will open in July, a project official said Friday, in a major step forward in boosting the country's lucrative tourism sector, whose growth was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. Work on Phnom Penh's new airport, officially known as the Techo International Airport, began in 2019, covering an area of 2,600 hectares (6,425 acres) located at the border of Kandal and Takeo provinces, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the capital. 'I think the TIA airport here is going to be launched in the soft opening in July 2025, and we believe that so many passengers are waiting and they really want to come in to see this new airport,' said Charles Vann, director of the airport's project steering committee, during a media tour. The new airport is a $1.5 billion joint venture between the Cambodian government and the Overseas Cambodian Investment Corp. It's being built by the China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Group Co., Ltd. The architects for the airport are the British firm Foster + Partners, whose website says its 'design embodies a strong sense of place" and is "responsive to the tropical climate.' The terminal building sits under what is described as a single overarching roof canopy that is a lightweight steel grid shell, 'with an innovative screen that filters daylight and illuminates the vast terminal space.' Construction is being undertaken in three phases. Initially, the airport is expected to be capable of handling up to 13 million passengers a year, with capacity increased up to 30 million passengers after 2030, and then up to 50 million passengers in 2050. It will be the second major airport in Cambodia to open in the space of two years. In 2023, the Chinese-financed Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport began operations in the northwestern province of Siem Reap, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the centuries-old Angkor Wat temple complex, the country's major tourist attraction. Tourism is one of the main pillars supporting Cambodia's economy. According to the Ministry of Tourism, Cambodia received around 6.7 million international tourists in 2024, a 23% increase over 2023.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
A major new airport to serve Cambodia's capital and boost tourism is due to open in July
KANDAL, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia expects that its new airport serving the capital will open in July, a project official said Friday, in a major step forward in boosting the country's lucrative tourism sector, whose growth was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. Work on Phnom Penh's new airport, officially known as the Techo International Airport, began in 2019, covering an area of 2,600 hectares (6,425 acres) located at the border of Kandal and Takeo provinces, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the capital. 'I think the TIA airport here is going to be launched in the soft opening in July 2025, and we believe that so many passengers are waiting and they really want to come in to see this new airport,' said Charles Vann, director of the airport's project steering committee, during a media tour. The new airport is a $1.5 billion joint venture between the Cambodian government and the Overseas Cambodian Investment Corp. It's being built by the China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Group Co., Ltd. The architects for the airport are the British firm Foster + Partners, whose website says its 'design embodies a strong sense of place" and is "responsive to the tropical climate.' The terminal building sits under what is described as a single overarching roof canopy that is a lightweight steel grid shell, 'with an innovative screen that filters daylight and illuminates the vast terminal space.' Construction is being undertaken in three phases. Initially, the airport is expected to be capable of handling up to 13 million passengers a year, with capacity increased up to 30 million passengers after 2030, and then up to 50 million passengers in 2050. It will be the second major airport in Cambodia to open in the space of two years. In 2023, the Chinese-financed Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport began operations in the northwestern province of Siem Reap, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the centuries-old Angkor Wat temple complex, the country's major tourist attraction. Tourism is one of the main pillars supporting Cambodia's economy. According to the Ministry of Tourism, Cambodia received around 6.7 million international tourists in 2024, a 23% increase over 2023.
