On October 19, local time, the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee passed the so-called "2021 South China sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act", which claims to impose sanctions on Chinese entities and individuals involved in activities related to the so-called disputed areas in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, including freezing their property in the United States, not entering the United States or revoking existing visas.
In fact, the bill was originally introduced by anti-China lawmaker Rubio in December 2016 and revived in March 2017 and May 2019, but all three attempts were unsuccessful. In May, Rubio introduced the bill for the fourth time, which has now been passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Five years have passed, and apart from the date, the content of the so-called sanctions bill has remained almost unchanged.
These sanctions are "familiar" and have nothing new, and even if they finally come into force, they will be nothing more than "a piece of waste paper".
In December 2016, Rubio first introduced the so-called South china and East China Sea Sanctions Act of 2016, which not only sanctions companies and individuals involved in claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea, but also prohibits the U.S. Government Publishing Office from publishing any document that refers to the South China Sea and the East China Sea as part of China; prohibits facilitating certain investments in these waters; and prohibits assistance to certain countries that recognize China's sovereignty over these waters. These radical measures were not recognized at the time, and even the US "Diplomat" website directly satirized: "Is this proposal serious?" ”
5 years ago was treated as a child's play, 5 years later suddenly valued, the United States Washington Stimson Center China program director Sun Yun believes that the so-called sanctions bill is very likely to eventually pass.
该法案当前状态 Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably
At present, the so-called "2021 South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act" is already in the state of "submitting amendments". Sun Yun noted that the official description of the status of the bill ended with the use of "Favorably" . This means that as long as the bill is amended, it will actively consider the meaning. That is to say, as long as this bill has been amended, then the current state of this bill is supported and approved by most of the members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, and the next step will be to push this bill to the voting platform of the Senate for voting. ”
The same proposal to change the soup without changing the medicine has been put forward again after five years, why is it acceptable to most members of Congress today? Sun Yun analyzed that the proposal is catering to the needs of current US politicians to put pressure on the Biden administration. According to incomplete statistics, there are nearly 360 China-related and anti-China motions waiting in line in both houses of the US Congress for approval. Sun Yun believes that this is consistent with the current "big climate" in the US political arena. "Because there are a lot of people who think that Biden's China policy is not resolute enough and the actions he has taken are not strong enough, I think this actually has a promoting effect on some of the more severe actions taken by Congress on the China issue." If this bill is passed, then it means that it has changed from an executive act of the government to a legal act enacted by Congress, and the US government has the responsibility to enforce the law, so not enforcing this law, that is, if it does not sanction individuals and entities related to China, then it will have the effect of 'breaking the law'. ”
In this regard, Wang Yiming, a specially invited researcher of the globalization think tank, further analyzed that Rubio first proposed this bill at the end of 2016, after Trump just came to power, but the focus of US China-related sanctions during the Trump administration was in the economic and trade fields, and there was little ink on the South China Sea issue. Now Biden attaches great importance to the security of the Indo-Pacific, but is relatively indifferent to economic and trade issues. So this big wind shift in the White House is a very important background.
Wang Yiming pointed out that the reason why the bill can be passed is also related to the relatively small number of opponents and interests in The Congress. "For example, another bill that Rubio is pushing more attention to is the so-called 'Xinjiang Uyghur Labor Compulsory Law', which he lists as the number one bill, but this bill cannot pass in the House of Representatives now, because it involves solar cells in Xinjiang, and it has a certain relationship with the new energy source that the Biden administration intends to cooperate with China, so it has encountered certain resistance in the House of Representatives."
Although the so-called sanctions bill is very likely to be passed, for china, it is just a piece of waste paper. Shi Yubing, vice president of the South China Sea Research Institute of Xiamen University, believes that the bill is neither legal nor reasonable, and is another example of the superiority of domestic law over international law.
Shi Yubing pointed out that first, the bill proposes that Chinese individuals in the South China Sea should be sanctioned for activities related to, such as island and reef construction, china mobile base station construction, energy construction, and even lighthouse construction. And these activities, especially the construction of lighthouses, are a product of public services to communities in the South China Sea, and they are construction activities that take place within the territory of our country. Sanctions against our legitimate construction activities are contrary to the principle of national sovereignty under international law. Second, from the definition of its dispute, it mentions that if a Chinese individual engages in the above-mentioned activities on islands and reefs in the South China Sea, as long as these activities are protested by one or more ASEAN countries, saying that the activities threaten regional peace, stability and security, or that the activities in the East China Sea are protested by Japan or South Korea that these activities threaten regional peace, stability and security, then these activities will be sanctioned. The definition and assumptions of this controversy are absurd, because some ASEAN countries are not even coastal states in the South China Sea and do not have island and reef disputes with China.
Author: Wang Yu, editor-in-chief of Shenzhen Satellite TV's "Decisive Commanding Heights".