Claire Zhao

China continues to expand its retaliatory toolkit as geopolitical and trade tensions with the United States and, increasingly, the EU intensify. The tools vary in scope and severity, each with its own specific impacts on multinational companies operating in China. This primer covers the tools at China’s disposal to counter actions it perceives as inappropriate or unfair, starting with those most overtly retaliatory.

USCBC interviews Jane Nakano, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Energy Security and Climate Change Program, on China’s energy landscape. Topics include impacts of the war in Iran, challenges in China’s decarbonization push, the role of energy in US-China tech competition, and areas for foreign participation.

Just six days after issuing the Regulations on Industrial and Supply Chain Security (Doc. 834), China’s State Council released the Regulations on Countering Foreign States’ Improper Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (Doc. 835), another expansion of Beijing’s retaliatory toolkit. Unlike Doc. 834, which governs sectoral and commercial supply chain security and is triggered by a demonstrable harm or threat, Doc. 835 targets foreign legal pressure itself regardless of commercial impact and can therefore be invoked under a lower evidentiary threshold.

China’s 15th five-year plan (FYP) suggests that industrial policy is no longer just one policy area among many but rather an organizing logic for the whole economy. Beijing is increasingly aligning domestic substitution, enterprise innovation, anti-involution, and infrastructure development around the goal of building a more self-reliant industrial system.

On March 5, Premier Li Qiang presented the 2026 Government Work Report at the opening of the annual Two Sessions in Beijing, setting a comprehensive slate of economic and development tasks for the year. The report was released alongside a draft outline of the 15th five-year plan (FYP), which will guide economic policy through 2030.