Sanctions Against Reality

It’s difficult to apprehend the surreal threat of comprehensive Western sanctions against China. Back in 1949, after a century of neo-colonial marauding, when China could hardly produce a box of “safety matches” (aka foreign fire back then), Mao’s perspicacious response to sanctions was: “Let them isolate and sanction. Sanction us for eight to ten years, and all our problems will be resolved…” Well, nothing can solve all the problems of a country China’s size and complexity, but being left alone by the confederacy of deviously subversive nations was indeed conducive to national recuperation.

Comprehensive sanctions from the old West — an undefined and incoherent political alliance on planet Earth — today would be no less helpful. It will accelerate China’s return to its historical economic position, and ease domestic discontent during the challenging transition. The recent trade war with the US has accomplished just that in a number of crucial areas within a relatively short time.

International sanctions were first used by the UN against Rhodesia in 1966. Since then, the West has become addicted. In recent decades, sanctions are being used at alarming frequency, often unilaterally and recklessly. Since the Ukraine conflict started, 19 sanction packages covering tens of thousands of items, many of them ludicrously trivial, have been instituted against Russia. In the end, they hurt Europe’s economy much more than Russia’s. Infuriated, old Europe doubled down on shooting its own foot until nothing but a bloody mess was left below the knee, fully satisfying a definition of stupidity attributed to Einstein.

When it comes to China, the West has often brandished sanctions as a consequence if China dares to end its civil war in Taiwan, further betraying the imperial leftovers’ delirium if we refer to history and current reality. 

Historically …

Historically, China was largely isolationist commercially while the West sought access to its huge vibrant market. According to rough estimates by historians, China's Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE, primarily during the time of the Roman Empire) enjoyed about 26% of global GDP. This percentage rose to some mind boggling 50+% in the Tang Dynasty (618 CE - 907 CE, when Christendom was a bunch of theocracies engulfed by the Dark Ages) and Song Dynasty (960 CE - 1279 CE, during the feudalistic High Middle Ages).

Academic guesstimates are inevitably controversial, but there's no question that China was a global economic superpower during most of history. The Song Dynasty in particular was a technologically advanced and urbanised society, far surpassing the West in economics, innovation (paper money, compass, gunpowder, printing), and wealth. It eventually transmitted key technologies westward, influencing Europe's subsequent Renaissance and Age of Exploration.

Nonetheless, foreign trade was a negligible component in China’s economy throughout its dynastic vicissitudes.

The Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1912) was comparably prosperous and exclusive. More than one third of the world’s silver reserve was in Chinese hands when Lord McCartney of the burgeoning British Empire met Emperor Qianlong on September 14, 1793. His mission was to promote British goods to balance trade. Demand for Chinese tea, silk, porcelain, etc. was draining silver from the island empire. Qianlong arrogantly rejected him. The ageing son of heaven had a distaste for gadgets. He thought China needed nothing from the uncultivated ‘barbarians’, not knowing that the industrial revolution was about to change the world violently with far reaching consequences. The Opium Wars and other piracy acts soon followed, resulting in a century of instructive humiliations for the complacent dragon, expediting its reincarnation. 

With a few blinks of the eye, it's 2025 

The world seems to have changed dramatically since McCartney and Qianlong’s meeting. The imperial leftovers, having lived comfortably off grandpa’s hard fought loots and influences for a few generations, are wallowing in entitlements, using fiat currencies to ‘trade’ with ex-colonies for cheap goods, labour, and resources. When money runs out, they simply print more and grumble about trade imbalance, playing victimhood in a truly, craftily unfair world. If anyone dared to reject phantom money, they’d smear, bully, sanction, regime-change, or send the gunboats, covered by warplanes. The Skull and Bones has been replaced by banners of Freedom and Democracy, but national DNA and behaviour haven’t changed. That’s why history is an important reference. 

Meanwhile, China laboured doggedly and quietly to regain its historical self, this time sobered and strengthened by humiliation. Painful but valuable lessons had been learned. It’s once again manufacturing 30% of the world’s necessary and unnecessary goodies. Trade imbalance with the West has crept back big time. But unlike the reclusive dynasties, more than a third of its GDP today is tied to foreign trade.

China’s 21st century re-emergence was structured under a global framework designed and controlled by the West, under a US reign. Naturally, the architects of this world order assume that all nations depend on international trade to prosper, and China is no exception. In reality, this is only true to an extent, mostly during the country’s rebirth process. In the longer run, international trade, especially that with the West, is not nearly as critical as imagined.

International Trade with the West will become increasingly peripheral

By November 2025, China’s trade surplus for the year has surpassed one trillion USD. This landmark level has attracted different interpretations and reactions. Whatever one’s perspective, this severe trade imbalance warrants attention, though not necessarily for the reasons echoed by Western media.

Fundamentally, a nation’s (or tribe’s) bottomline is collective survival. Air is free. Water and food depend on geography, hence the need to fight with neighbours every now and then for arable and/or grazing land. Defence capability is added to the survival list by necessity.

But humans are vain. Once survival has been secured, people fancy goods and gadgets. If a country can manufacture most of them domestically, then it doesn't need international trade unless it lacks raw material and energy. In that case, it shares some of the goodies with others in return for lumps of coal, barrels of oil, and chunks of mineral ore.

That’s how Dynastic China thrived economically by being exclusive and periodically reclusive as its western neighbours sought market access tirelessly. Emperor Qianlong wasn’t completely wrong, just that his familiar paradigm had been upended by Western industrial technology. Finally, more than two centuries on, a reversal is happening, and at a dazzling speed. China is once again in a position to produce mostly for its own people, treating external demands as extras. 

However, having laboured as the world’s key factory for decades, the strong economic inertia can’t change course overnight. Reducing reliance on foreign trade takes time, and will generate a bit of turbulence. But the end result would be a healthier and more balanced redistribution of global labour and rewards. Excessive trade surplus in the manufacturing sector is unsustainable, and tantamount to self-imposed slavery.

Slavery? Yes

Imagine a hypothetical extreme in which China works overtime to churn out 100% of the world’s manufactured output. What would the others be doing? Besides agriculture and the service industry, some would be digging up natural resources, ‘selling’ them to China in return for manufactured goods. There would at least be some material exchange in this case. A second group of nations, without natural resources or meaningful industrial output, would just spend their days shopping with nicely designed money, bitching about trade imbalance, so they hope.

In this hypothetical situation, China would effectively be sweating to turn rocks and oil into affordable thingies for the global community. If that’s not voluntary slavery, what is? In a fairer and healthier world, countries would labour and produce roughly in proportion to their size, wealth, standard of living and capabilities, and trade with a sense of value.

Coming back to the second group of nations. If they no longer produce desirable goods and have no natural resources to offer, a sobering reassessment of their role in the global economy would be in order. When their gunboats are no longer feared, would their money still be trusted and accepted? And what if they defy logic and reality, and threaten not to ‘buy’ anything from China with paper money? Wouldn’t that be comical?

More significantly, the world is now much bigger than the obsolete G-7 thinks. Outside the decaying circle of imperial remnants, South East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, nearly everywhere else, are emerging with higher quality common sense and bigger market potential. These regions happen to be the source of useful raw material and human resources, showing great potential in taking up a responsible share of international labour in the new world order.

The special case of the United States

The US is a special case as usual. 

While European politicians blow up power plants to save the environment, the Americans remain relatively sober and realistic. Would recent developments trigger an American awakening? 

Awaken to what? 

Awaken to the fact that the US is a self-sufficient huge market with plenty of food, natural resources, and talents. It should, and could easily adopt an approach similar to China's when it comes to global affairs: Let others do their own things, say whatever they wish, and come seek meaningful cooperation when they are ready, and with something to offer. 

Unfortunately, the giant young country has inherited the DNA and strategic vision of a tiny island state. Little Britain needed hegemony to maintain relevance. The US, like China, doesn't. Subjugations and piracy would only weaken the drive and spirit of its originally hardworking, tough, ruthless and resourceful population, emasculating future generations. Perhaps it’s not too late to wake up? 

But it would take much more than a rambunctious political show once every four years to change the vast and deeply entrenched network of vested interests directing its national characters and fantasies. Resorting to traditional piracy would be an easy and familiar solution to the prodigious problems it has created for itself.

James Tam 2026.01.12