Thursday, July 24, 2025

china also faces sanctions without mandate or legitimacy crom the outlawed West

 

China also faces sanctions without mandate or legitimacy from the outlawed West

Mohamed Lamine KABA, July 24, 2025

Far from any multilateral framework, Western sanctions against China embody a normative shift where power supplants law—without ever concerning, constraining, or intimidating Beijing.

china response to the sanctions

Since 2022, the escalation of Sino-Western tensions has crystallized by the proxy conflict in Ukraine and the rise of a multipolar world. The United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom have imposed unilateral sanctions on Chinese entities suspected of supporting Russia in this NATO-orchestrated hybrid war, with the aim of weakening Moscow before turning to China. Beijing has vehemently rejected these measures as illegal and unfounded, lacking UN approval. In 2025, this conflict dynamic has intensified, revealing a deep fracture between the West and the RIC (Russia-India-China) triptych Alliance, as well as with the Global South, from Africa to Latin America, including Asia and the Caribbean. This tense geopolitical context raises questions about the legitimacy of sanctions, national sovereignty, and the future of an international system previously dominated by Western powers, now imprisoned by the multipolarism embodied by the BRICS Alliance.
Beijing has vehemently rejected these measures as illegal and unfounded, lacking UN approval

Extraterritorial sanctions as illegitimate instruments of Western geostrategic interference

Illegitimate tools of intimidation and geostrategic interference specific to the West, the sanctions (which bear all the attributes of extraterritoriality) were reinforced with the adoption on July 18 of the 18th package by the EU of Von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, tied to NATO’s belligerent stance. The “triangle of evil”—composed of the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom—has increased pressure on Chinese companies accused of bolstering Russia’s war effort without the approval of the UN Security Council. Beijing condemns punitive diplomacy driven by Western geopolitical designs rather than international law. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has emphasized the lack of a multilateral basis for these sanctions. With this 18th package of sanctions, the EU has not only targeted Russia but also Chinese banks and technology companies, including DeepSeek—which disrupted and unscrewed American giants in the sector on January 27—prompting an immediate response from Beijing. These sanctions, decided outside the UN framework, embody an imperialist drift where the West arrogates to itself the right to judge and punish according to its own interests, ignoring the principles of sovereignty and non-interference established by the UN.

China, the other architect of a post-Western order based on multipolar sovereignty

Alongside Russia, China, for its part, is asserting itself as the architect of a new post-Western order based on multipolar sovereignty. In response to the economic offensive, it is consolidating its strategic alliances with Russia and India, notably through the trilateral RIC format, as well as with other nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The meeting between Wang Yi and Lavrov in Beijing provided an opportunity to describe their partnership as “the most stable and mature strategic relationship between major powers.” Beijing refuses to bow to Western pressure and maintains that its relations with Moscow are of no concern to Washington, Brussels, or London. At the same time, China denounces Western sanctions—not only against it but also against other non-Western countries—as a malign attempt by the Atlantic Alliance to perpetuate the conflict in Ukraine, precisely to give its own survival a chance, which ultimately results in the activation of its instruments of terror around the world. This Chinese positioning is part of a multipolar vision of the world, where rules are no longer imposed by the West—which has lost its strategic monopoly—but are negotiated between sovereign powers. By denouncing the illegitimacy of these sanctions, it defends a vision where the international order is based on consensus rather than coercion.

So, from the collapse of Western influence in Africa to Cuba’s geoeconomic rise within the BRICS, to the flashpoints in the Middle East and the turbulence in the South and East China Seas, all of these dynamics make Donald Trump a symptom of a Western rhetoric incapable of tolerating any narrative involving Putin, Xi, Khomeini—or the powers that be Russia, China, and Iran.

It is therefore clear that by arrogating to itself the right to sanction without a UN mandate, the West is not so much punishing China as excluding itself from the international legal framework.

 

Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in Geopolitics of Governance and Regional Integration, Institute of Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences, Pan-African University

More on this topic
After the BRICS Summit in Rio: What Are Experts’ Perspectives for the Future of the Bloc  Amid the Rise of the Global Majority? Part 1
Trump’s 50-Day Ultimatum: It’s a Bluff, or He’s a Madman?
Trump Unhinged: Bomb Moscow, Give Kiev Tomahawks, and Impose 100 % Secondary Sanctions
Trump’s Rage and the Collapse of Yet Another Western Scheme
The Weary Hegemon: America’s Diplomatic Self-Erasure in Asia

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