Authoritarian Sanctions in Comparative Perspectives: The Case of China

• In Event: Regime Type and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Do political institutions matter in explaining the ways in which economic sanctions are threatened and imposed? While previous theories of sanctions are based on behaviors and strategies of democratic sanctioners, we lack systematic understanding of sanctions imposed by authoritarian countries. In this paper, we focus on economic sanctions imposed by China, which are growing in terms of their frequency and intensity, to see whether they are different from sanctions of democratic countries such as the United States or not. Using the existing dataset of sanctions (i.e., TIES), and our own collection of cases after 2005, we compare Chinese sanctions with other sanctions of democracies, which cooperate cautiously as well as compete increasingly with China across the globe, to argue that they are different in terms of issues, types, and aims that sanctions are used. First, we disaggregate the China’s economic sanctions into trade practice-related (i.e., political economic) and non-trade practice-related (i.e., security) ones to bring more concrete and nuanced comparative analysis into the established literature. Second, we show China’s de facto sanctions on South Korea for the THAAD Deployment in 2017 and 2018 as a case illustration of security-oriented sanctions that draw more attentions in East Asia. Our findings contribute to sanctions and China studies by improving theoretical and empirical specifications as well as providing policy implications in the era of challenging China.

Authors

• yoojeong Lee, Yonsei University

• Wooyeal Paik, Yonsei University

• Taehee Whang, Yonsei University