China’s Administrative Legal System To Deal With Extraterrestrial Economic Sanction

In recent years,unilateralism and trade protectionism have been making a comeback in Western developed countries.A case in point is the United States,which frequently resorts to extraterritorial economic sanctions to interfere into other countries’ financial trade freedom and suppress normal trade demands of enterprises in other countries.Extraterritorial economic sanctions refer to the sanction initiator,after initiating a sanction,requires nationals of the third country to abide by sanction rules and do not trade with target countries,in addition to banning domestic nationals to trade with the target countries.These so-called extraterritorial economic sanction behaviors can be easily abused and has become a way to damage legitimate rights of the third country,thus usually causing an uproar among the third country.At the same time,the abuse of extraterritorial economic sanctions,if examined from the perspective of legitimacy,is inconsistent with international interests as well as with principles to which the national jurisdiction should adhere.Behind extraterritorial economic sanctions of the United States is a complete and rigorous domestic law system that includes laws,administrative regulations,and administrative orders.The government also has some specialized functional departments to be responsible for implementation of the sanction behavior,and a set of domineering application criteria and punishment measures,which are weapons more effective than the military hegemony of the United States,having been developed into a normal means for trade protection.Countries around the world generally show disapproval of the extraterritorial economic sanctions of the United States,thinking that legitimate countermeasures should be taken with the government playing the core role,and fully considering the domestic national conditions,and the national strength and economic development of the two sides.China is a representative emerging economy,which is directly competing with the United States in a variety of fields.Meanwhile,with a political system totally different from that of the United States,China is usually a major target of extraterritorial economic sanctions.With Chinese enterprises gradually marching into the international market,they are increasingly faced with risks of the extraterritorial economic sanctions from the United States.A famous case in point is ZTE Corporation which suffered the sanction from the government of the United States.At present,China still has many problems to tackle with extraterritorial economic sanctions,including enterprises’ weak awareness of compliance,lack of corresponding legislation,government’s lack of systematic countermeasures,etc.In response to the status,China should accelerate the construction of an administrative law system that is in line with China’s national conditions to address threats posed by extraterritorial economic sanctions.In terms of legislation,the government and corresponding legislation organs should speed up the promulgation of specialized laws,and formulate relevant laws according to the procedures of the Constitution and Legislation Law to make up the gap of legislation.In terms of countermeasures,the government should promote the construction of the unreliable entry list,reasonably plan and improve the legal basis,applicable scope,administration scope,procedural rules and remedies for institutional establishment,etc.In terms of compliance awareness,the government should strengthen compliance supervision of enterprises’ overseas operation,address problems existing in the sanction compliance risk supervision mechanism for China’s foreign business,improve the distribution of supervision rights to avoid absence of supervision before,during and after an event,and give full paly to the role of social organizations in the process of supervision.As to how to help enterprises suffering from sanctions,the government can make use of legitimate and reasonable tax preferences,administrative subsidies,government purchasing and other policy measures to provide necessary support for Chinese enterprises that have suffered losses therefrom.It is expected that these measures can help Chinese enterprises avoid losses and improve their competitiveness.