The third session of the Standing Committee of China’s 14th National People’s Congress passed the Law on Foreign Relations on June 28th. It was signed and promulgated by Xi Jinping and went into effect on July 1st. Wang Yi, member of the Politburo and Director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, published an article titled “Implementing the Law on Foreign Relations to Provide Strong Legal Backing for Major-country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era” on the People's Daily on June 29th. In the article, Wang elaborated on the significance, general principles and main contents of the law.
Also on June 29th, the state-run Xinhua News Agency interviewed Shen Chunyao, chairperson of the Legislative Affairs Committee of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, to explain the background and purposes of formulating the law and its main contents. And China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning described the law as “the first basic law that fully outlines China’s major policies, principles and positions, and systems and structures concerning China’s interaction with the world, and provides the overall rules and regulations on China’s foreign relations” at the regular press conference.
Cfisnet.com, which is administered by China’s Foreign Ministry, published an article titled “Foreign Media: China Passes Law to Regulate Foreign Relations and Safeguard Interests” on June 30th. The article summarized responses from foreign sources that “the Law on Foreign Relations will provide a legal basis for diplomatic struggles against sanctions, interference, and foreign countries’ long-arm jurisdiction. The law marks the first time that China explicitly states in words and in legal form the purposes, conditions and policy guidance of the application of China’s extraterritorial jurisdiction. Principles and regulations concerning countermeasures and restrictive measures targeting foreign countries, individuals or organizations are also formulated.” It is obvious that Beijing is using the law to launch legal warfare, public opinion warfare and diplomatic struggles through party and state media as well as administrative and foreign affairs departments.
Since trade disputes between China and the U.S. erupted in 2018, China has formulated various laws concerning foreign-related issues, including the Trademark Law, Anti-Unfair Competition Law, Patent Law and Copyright Law, as bilateral disputes escalated and the risks of decoupling with the international production and supply chains occurred. The laws not only alleviate political and economic pressure from the U.S. but also serve as tools for China’s market opening strategy. The formulation of the Law on Foreign Relations during China's Two Session in March attracted great attention.
In response to a question by a reporter from Channel NewsAsia on March 4th, Wang Chao, spokesperson for the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress, said that China “stands firmly against such practices (long-arm jurisdiction). To counter suppression and interference of China’s internal affairs, China has introduced a number of laws, including the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, Rules on Counteracting Unjustified Extra-territorial Application of Foreign Legislation and Provisions on the Unreliable Entity List.” It is evident that China actively adopts a reasonable, advantageous and restrained strategy for waging diplomatic struggles while successively improving its foreign-related legislation system. Just as pointed out by Shen Chunyao, “there are still some weaknesses. In particular, many legal vacuums exist in the area of safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests.
The enforcement of the Law on Foreign Relations not only symbolizes China’s progress in dealing with the problem of lacking a general law in its foreign-related legislation system but also shows that China formulated the umbrella legislation based on various foreign-related technical laws and will use it as specific guidelines for diplomatic struggles. Wang Yi made political assessment of the new law and developments in diplomatic struggles in his “Implementing the Law on Foreign Relations to Provide Strong Legal Backing for Major-country Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era” article. He said that “daring to struggle and adept at struggling involve being good at using legislation as weapons, continuous improvement of legal toolkit for diplomatic struggles and bringing into full play the active role of legislation as a stabilizer of the international order.”
From the perspective of China’s belief in materialist dialectics, contradictions between the economic base of society and the ideological political/legal "superstructure" of society are a force determining constant struggles. China’s previous efforts in establishing a foreign-related legislation system mostly focused on creating a basic structure featuring economic issues. In terms of struggles against foreign enemies, it seems that China is good at making temporary compromises and concessions. But it is also necessary to be good at launching an offensive. In regard to the legal/political superstructure, China adopts anti-monopoly, national security, internet censorship, market entry and treatment as well as negative list measures on foreign enterprises. In other words, judging from China’s thinking on building a foreign-related legislation system, its efforts appear to be bolstering barriers to globalization but in essence serve the purposes of strategic opening of the Chinese market and continuous improvement of the legal toolkit for diplomatic struggles.
(Chiu-lung Huang, Adjunct Associate Professor of Department of Public Security of the Central Police University)
(Translated to English by Cindy Li)
