China: Economic Sanctions
Publication Date: May 2005
Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service
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Coverage: China
Abstract:
The United States currently maintains the following economic sanctions against China: limits on U.S. foreign assistance; U.S. "No" votes or abstention in the international banks; ban on Overseas Private Investment Corporation programs; ban on export of defense articles or defense services; ban on import of munitions or ammunition; denial of Generalized System of Preferences status; substantial export controls on dual-use items, particularly satellites, nuclear technology, and computers; export and licensing restrictions on targeted entities found to have engaged in proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction (or related technology); and Presidential authority to restrict Chinese military companies and Chinese government-affiliated businesses from developing commercial activities inside the United States.
Human rights conditions in China and the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction resulting from China's lack of export controls or lack of cooperation with international export control standards continue to be the main foreign policy or national security issues that hold these economic restrictions in place.
The influence of Congress on U.S. policy toward China, once significant because so much hung on the annual possibility that favorable trade terms could be suspended, has more recently been diffused. Sanctions that remain in place today can all be modified, eased, or lifted altogether by the President, without congressional input (though some changes would require that the President notify Congress). Congress and the Administration each recognize the importance of China's emerging ability to consume and to produce, and China has become an increasingly important trading partner of the United States. At the same time, because of the unrelenting tension between the United States and the Peoples Democratic Republic of Korea over the latter's interest in developing nuclear weapons capability, and because of China's longstanding relation with North Korea as a primary trading partner and benefactor, the United States' relations with China are crucial.
This paper will be updated as events warrant.