"China’s Economic Statecraft: Lessons Learned From Ukraine" - By CWP Audrye Wong

Economic statecraft has become an increasingly prominent part of China’s foreign policy toolkit. Beijing has often sought to use both economic coercion and inducements to achieve its political goals, albeit to mixed results. In that vein, Chinese leaders have attentively watched how the United States has deployed its economic power, including US-led sanctions on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. This recent episode has underscored America’s continued global financial power and highlighted to Beijing its potential economic vulnerabilities, as well as the risks of international opprobrium. At the same time, Washington faces challenges in assembling a durable global coalition to exert pressure on Moscow, due to economic dependencies on Russian energy and political reticence outside of a core bloc of allies. I provide an overview of China’s approaches to economic statecraft and examine some of the key lessons that Beijing’s leaders are likely to draw from Russia’s war in Ukraine. I then discuss the implications for China’s economic statecraft going forward. Beijing is likely to redouble its efforts to increase economic self-reliance in critical technologies and sectors, better insulate the country from financial sanctions through de-dollarization, and continue to dangle economic inducements to peel allies and partners away from the United States, thus weakening US and allied leverage over China during a potential future crisis.

Audrye Wong Pages 121-136 | Published online: 04 Apr 2023 https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2188830

Audrye Wong is an assistant professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California. Her research examines how states use non-military means, including economic and informational tools, to gain geopolitical influence. Audrye’s current book project analyzes the strategies and effectiveness of economic statecraft. Other projects examine authoritarian informational statecraft, foreign influence operations, and the role of diasporas in international relations. Before coming to USC, Audrye was a Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and MIT’s Security Studies Program. She received a PhD in Security Studies from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Audrye has held affiliations with Harvard’s Fairbank Center, the Wilson Center, the Brookings Institution, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research has been supported by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Tobin Project, and the Bradley Foundation.

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