US Financial Payment And Settlement Sanctions And My Country's Countermeasures

The United States financial payment and settlement sanction has become a form of the U.S.supranational intervention in financial payment and settlement,to its advantage.This sanction is the subclass of financial sanction,which is one of the major lever of economic sanctions.Although the barriers of imposing this sanction is pretty high,as one of the world's largest economies,the U.S.satisfies the prerequisites and requirements.Nowadays,the U.S.has frequently used it for political ends to seal its hegemony against the foreign countries,other than cracking down illegality like combatting terrorism or commitment to nuclear nonproliferation.With globalization sweeping the world and rapid development of financial integration,economic sanctions have gained advantages compared to military intervention in terms of extraterritorial repression.The sanctions are famous for low-cost,big power and easy enforcement and has been widely applied.With the help of dollar pre-eminence and Society for Worldwide Inter-bank Financial Telecommunications(hereinafter “SWIFT”),the U.S.is in the overwhelming position to impose the financial payment and settlement sanction.With the rising protectionism and hegemonism in the U.S.,this dominance has been abused by compelling foreign countries to change or compromise certain policy or system.SWIFT is a global financial telecommunication network that facilitates world's most secure international exchange of payment and settlement instructions between central banks,banks,multinational corporations,and major securities firms and possesses almost all the financial transactions data worldwide.The sanction expands the jurisdiction of the U.S.domestic law,having an extraterritorial effect.Meanwhile,the U.S.has established an operating mechanism from three aspects: decision makers,executive body and distributors like financial institutions.What's more,the executive order issued by George W.Bush allows the U.S.to access to the SWIFT data.Therefore,the U.S.has successfully imposed plenty of financial sanctions,including financial payment and settlement sanction by updating its Specially Designated Nationals List(hereinafter “SDNs”).Considering the increasingly tense and uncertain relationship between China and the U.S.,especially during the China-U.S.Trade War,it exists a risk that the U.S.will impose the financial clearance sanction against China in the near future and form the alliance to entrench the threat.Even if China were not listed in the SDNs,Chinese entities and individuals would also be at the same risk.Many historical cases illustrate that the negative externality of the financial payment and settlement sanction is more harmful to China than the China-U.S.Trade War.Therefore,the dissertation is trying to contribute some suggestions for China to take counter measures and fight against it on the basis of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary,from the perspective of bypassing,facing and transcending it.The dissertation is made up of five chapters.Chapter one introduces the origin and development of the U.S.financial payment and settlement sanction.Chapter two focuses on in-depth legal analysis of the sanction.Chapter three elaborates the mechanism of the sanction and its irrationality and future trends.Chapter four emphasizes the frequency and abuse of the sanction by two sanction case studies,which targeted Iran and BNP Paribas SA.In the meantime,the two cases indicate that the sanction is unilateral and value-skewed.Despite the lack of a potent countermeasure so far,Chapter five tries to put forward some suggestions for China.Since the transaction modes established by EU and Russia to bypass SWIFT have certain limitations,and blockchain related anti-sanction measures are still at the very early stage and not put into practice,the internationalize of the CNY(China Yuan)and launch of digital fiat currency can fundamentally transcend and overcome the U.S.financial payment and settlement sanction.However,there is still a long way to actually enact that effectively.Hence,apart from the counter measures mentioned above,forming a better financial market infrastructure to withstand the sanction risk at the level of law and systematic overall planning is more needed.No counter measure could be successfully implemented without the protection of a better financial market infrastructure.Therefore,the three-pronged mission of law,finance and technology can better equip China to take counter measures and fight against the upcoming U.S.financial payment and settlement sanction.