Beijing adapts its international legal apparatus. Objective: to have new tools in disputes with other countries. And one weapon more than the United States.
XI Jinping China is definitively thought of empire. A valuable study by the Institut Montaigne, one of the most popular French studies center, signed by Mathieu Duchatel and Georgina Wright, has dealt with this new self -awareness of power. The analysis, entitled China’s Extraterritoriality: in New Stage of Lawfare, it examines the use “out of town” that Beijing is making right as a strategic tool – to be asserted also abroad – to strengthen its global position and protect their national interests.
On the historical and cultural level, the extraterritoriality of the law has long been considered a symbol of submission because it reported the minds to the “century of humiliations”the period of Chinese history from 1839 to 1949, that is, from the First War of opium (1839- 1842) to the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949, after the victory of the Communist Party in the Civil War against Kuomintang. During this century, China suffered a series of political offenses and territorial losses due to wars, ruinous treaties and repeated foreign interventions, which led to a significant loss of sovereignty and national dignity. The extraterritoriality of the law was that of others, since foreign powers were at home in China and applied their laws there. Today this paradigm is overturned and reinterpreted as a means to affirm a Chinese supremacy.
On a geopolitical level, all this represents a new phase of the “lawfare”an expression that describes the war waged to the sound of laws. In particular, we can distinguish several main directors. The first is the defense or retaliation against external interventions perceived as interference compared to the party strategy. For example, China uses legal tools to combat economic sanctions and technological restrictions, mainly coming from the United States. For example, rules such as the “Export Control Law” and the “Blocking Rules” aim to reduce the impact of foreign sanctions and protect dragon’s businesses. Thus the regulation on the list of unreliable entities of 2020 takes on foreign companies that damage Chinese interests, while the law against foreign sanctions of 2021 allows you to respond to economic measures that blow up the fly to the nose to Beijing strategists.
Secondly, the regime appeals to extraterritorial rules to justify international actions. This is the case of claims in the southern Chinese Sea, where the chronicles take into account with alarming frequency of fibrillations and accidents. The reactive strategy of the Asian giant, on a legal level, is rapidly giving the field to the development of offensive and coercive solutions, so as to force other nations or companies to conform to its policies. This approach reflects the systemic rivalry with the United States and the Chinese desire to rebalance the global influence in its favor. However, it could be the European Union to pay it, which according to the analysis of the Montaigne insurance has not yet adequate its legal “arsenal” to contrast such a transnational repression. Once again, in Europe, it will affect the most determined peoples. Like the Lithuanians, who, attacked by China for their relations with Taiwan at the end of 2021, had the merit of taking the bull for the horns, causing a jolt by the Commission, forcing it to a reflection on the legal solutions that can be activated in the event of “Bullying” by Beijing.
Finally, it is worth remembering that China projects its internal oppression regime also abroadsystematically taking Chinese dissidents and political opponents through practices such as intimidation, forced repatriation and the threat represented by the creation in other states of police stations at the hands of the security apparatuses. They are not recorded, but the presence of these stations is well known in Italy and has made the subject of parliamentary questions. In fact, it is believed that they are operational in at least four Italian cities: Rome, Milan, Florence and Prato.
